


Open Interference

by peerfin



Series: Confluence [1]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Ableism, Alien Biology, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Culture Shock, Kinda, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Rating May Change, Saiyan Culture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-02-09 19:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18644794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peerfin/pseuds/peerfin
Summary: Son Goku is only a few things; most secure and a couple heretofore unknowable, but soon there are strangers from space deciding that sort of thing for him and that - that's something.Especially when they're calling him a deserter.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm absolutely flying by the seat of my pants. Never written long term before so I'm gonna take it step by step, I'd love to hear critiques by the way! There's a big difference between reading copious works thinking, 'man - this could be so much better if this author just...' and actually executing something original. 
> 
> So I'm gonna see about pacing myself with shorter stuff, being lenient (yikes yikes yikes), and getting my ffffffffffuckin act together. Seperate. Making something of this nonsense headspace. I would like to do this and think that I improved somewhere along the line.

* * *

“Hold on, Chichi!”  
  
“Wh- Goku, I haven’t been on this thing since we were kids!  Slow down a bit.”  
  
He looks over his shoulder at her, silly grin peeking all the way up to his gums and he’s pressing down on his crossed ankles, looking as carefree as always.  “Then just grab on t’me, like how you do on the ground.”  
  
“Ah,” her face falls.  He agreed to marry her but rebuffed almost every attempt she made to show physical affection, and now!  “Goku! I’m so glad you’re coming around!”  
  
She less holds onto him than pulls him bodily against her, squeezing him around the waist and resting her chin over his shoulder.  He makes a noise not unlike a man with a fist in his stomach, but like with most affection she shows Goku he relaxes into her once he realizes she doesn’t plan to do anything else.  He’s never initiated before! She’s proud of the progress their relationship is making already. He used to complain about mobility versus closeness, but she paid it no mind and it seems his qualms have taken a backseat to their love.  Good.  
  
“Al- haha, alright!  Nimbus, faster! To home!”  The little cloud obliges, carving sputtering arcs into the wind toward Paozu.  Chichi nuzzles close enough that their black hair whips together behind them, her cheek pressed to the bottom of his jaw and she closes her eyes against the bright blue sky, their wedding bells still ringing in her pulse.  Goku’s tie lost itself to the wind with her veil somewhere between here and the reception her father hosted at their home - his home. Her home is with Goku now, in Paozu where it’ll just be her and him and the family they’ll make together.  Goku’s tux is also missing, but she doesn’t mind; the supple button up material adheres well enough that she’s holding him rather than the stiff, if not handsome, silhouette the coat cut of him.  
  
Goku complained the clothes were stuffy, but he put up like a good sport, and got his fill for the trouble.  She can still by some miracle feel the distention in his belly and she’s laughing, happy to feel the fruit of her prosperity spent on the man she loves, as ridiculous as he looked eating it all.  She’ll make sure he never goes hungry another day in his life. She contracted a fully outfitted kitchen in the home they hurdle toward for this express purpose.  
  
“Goku!”  
  
“Yeah, ‘sup?” He’s giggling, maybe in response to her laughter; she hasn’t said anything funny yet and she remembers him often laughing just to laugh with her when they were children.    
  
“I’m Son Chichi now!  It sounds so silly,” She guffaws next to his ear, which seems to surprise him but he’s still smiling, so she imagines he may not mind so much.  He laughs too.  
  
“It does!  Why’d you do that?”  
  
“That’s part of marriage, I share names with you now.” It’s a lot easier to stomach the white hot flashes of rage now that she understands how much he simply doesn’t.  She imagines it’ll test her patience to guide him by hand through married life, but she expects to set him up to figure some of it out on his own. She knows he can, he did so well during the ceremony.    
  
“Oh, you’re right!  I was wonderin’ how everyone in Bulma’s family had the same name.  Then the kids get one from their parents like I did with Grandpa, yea?” He catches on quick when people are direct.    
  
“That’s right!  Our children will have our name too, isn’t that great?”  
  
“Sure, I’m excited to meet them!”    
  
Chichi feels her heart hammering declarations of her love into her rib cage, she’s so overwhelmed.  He’s so eager, just as excited to lead their life together as she is! Her grips his shoulders from under his arms, pressing the crown of her head against his spine to hide how her face blooms red.    
  
She reminds herself that he doesn’t entirely know what that means, which helps calm her down, but she’s satisfied to know that he’s willing to try.  With her. Her heart is back to sailing despite her better judgement.

  
She crosses her arms over his chest and pulls her chin back over his shoulder, but on the other side, where her wedding band can glint in her peripherals while she watches the landscape shift below them.  
  
“Me too!”  
  
Soon green is wiping away the rust of the desert below them, precarious spires and rolling dunes carrying into hills and plateaus, all cut by the silver edge of roiling rivers.  She’ll know they’ve reached Paozu when she can just make out the salt of the sea on the wind, filtered into their valley by the mountains rimming their slice of paradise. She knows couples typically honeymoon, but the wedding was set up so quickly.  She planned to ask Goku about his travels and go somewhere he remembered, but first she wanted their first night at home, in the place they would spend the rest of their lives together.  
  
And they make it there.  Goku dismounts the nimbus first, shocked by the sight of the little house that to him may very well have popped up out of the ground, and so eager to explore that rather than waiting for Chichi to hop off nimbus he simply scoops her from it to sit on his shoulder, an arm looped around her lap to steady her and her gown dripping from where it gathers on his breast.  She laughs in surprise, then they’re off. Goku runs for the door but not before making a few turns on the way to see more of how it fits into the valley, their house, and it rips more giggles from her chest, already out of breath and dizzy with affection.  
  
She calls his name, and he returns hers, and she can hear he’s thankful long before he says it.  
  
He opens the door when the reach it, and she twists over her waist to wrap herself about his head and fit the both of them through.  It blinds him, her arm blocks his eyes and she giggles to herself some more while he tries to get his bearings in a house he’s never seen before.  She spares him his sight and hops out of his hold to the ground. She beckons him, eyes glowing and heart so full with all the regret she knows she’ll never feel and he puts his hand in hers.  
  
Their life began that night.    
  
It also ended the next day

* * *

“You had a favor from the _King-_ ” atmosphere entry does them both a favor and Raditz’s prattling tapers off into a grunt.  It’s sadly short lived. The comms don’t even splutter.

 

“You had a favor from the King, and now you’re using it to take me to this planet in the middle of nowhere?”

 

_Ignore him._

 

“Stop ignoring me,” he growls.

 

“Fine.”

 

…

 

“You’re being facetious!” Now the comm crackles.

 

“You don’t know what that means.”

 

“I’ve heard you say it, that’s close enough.”  Bardock takes a long moment to tip his head back and exhale feelingly out of his nose.  Might as well start the briefing now so Raditz has as little time as possible to think, react, question, rebuke, punch.  Etc..

 

“You finally drag your ass away from the lab or a research mission and you fly me to the boonies without more than a ‘shut’ or ‘up’, and a pardon for an illegal mission that I didn’t agree to!” Bardock hears something clatter, he can imagine how Raditz gesticulates despite his stature and the relative amount of space at his disposal to do so.  He reigns in the chuckle.

 

He instead intones thoughtfully, peaks open his eyes and sits forward in his seat to survey the ocean reaching up toward them. “Consider this your mission captain’s briefing, then - and yes, that’s me.” Bardock hears Raditz’s teeth crack on a smartass quip, “We’re checking the status of a potentially AWOL, potentially dead Saiyan.  This planet is locally known as Earth, situated in the farthest reaches of the 2nd quadrant of North Galaxy. The surface is seventy percent water, the atmosphere is breathable and generally unpolluted, there are uncounted sentient species that originate from here. They have not officially made contact with the greater galactic federations.”  Bardock steamrolls right through the actually-very-quite-pertinent information in hopes that it’ll go over his subordinate’s head entirely.

 

“Oh, wow.  Isn’t it rare for a planet that supports life to get two dominant species?”  The slight bewilderment his tone carries, Bardock counts that as a success.

 

“Yes,” he says flatly.

 

“Hold on,” the gears turn almost audibly while Raditz works backwards through the missive, “Multiple species, this planet hasn’t been cleaned out?  You said we’re looking for a Saiyan, right? What’s the average power level on this planet?”

 

“Between five and fifteen.”

 

Radio silence again.  “You used a royal pardon,” Bardock sucks on his teeth, “to look for a _dead_ , because that’s the _only reason_ this place could possibly survive, Saiyan.  When the alliance has an ongoing retrieval order for deployed Saiyans.”  

 

Bardock does chuckle this time, “careful, your tone sounds a bit insubordinate.”

 

“Fuck you,” Raditz says.

 

“Here are your orders.”  Jungled mountains pitch up to their pods and swallow them whole.  One of them clips the mouth of a gorge and then the countryside blooms with streaks of exposed earth, skipping almost until the jungle has receded and the pods crater exposed to a picturesque plain.  Both spew swathes of atmosphere stabilizers when the pressure locks unclip, and Raditz more kicks his port open than lets it disengage. Bardock sits properly with his chin in his hand.

 

He waits for Raditz’s shadow over him before he starts again. “We’re going to the soldier’s original landing site to check their pod’s repair and emergency blutz equipment.  If we can’t find any logs or direct leads we’ll knock off the planet’s highest power levels until we find what we want.”

 

Raditz interrupts, “there’s nothin’ to find, even non combat Saiyans would have to sit at record low power levels to struggle here.” Bardock pulls himself out of the pod by the lip, shoulders past Raditz and hops unbothered to the mouth of the crater.  Shifts a boot in the local flora to watch it flatten obligingly, picks a rather reedy stalk of something with grain on it and splits it with his incisors. Green, not rare but not common.

 

He turns only his head back to Raditz, who glowers rather charmingly back.  The lip on that one, Bardock counts himself proud, despite what he has to say.  “You’re going to follow me, you’re going to shut up, you’re not going to mention this-” Bardock rustles his scouter and manually turns off communications, silently gestures that Raditz should do the same, “or what happens here on this planet to _anyone_ , especially not your elite buddies.”  

 

Raditz comes up behind his shoulder to sniff his derision, “easy, but no chance.”

 

“C’moon, it’ll be nice, we can hunt something local and bond with a little father-son competition for gizzards.” He places his hand on his hip and casts a  a smirk across the vista, completely away from Raditz.  The better not to laugh with.

 

“Did you have a vision?  Is that why you’re going to all this trouble?”  Raditz speaks seriously enough that the elder takes the hint; he’s not going to play along unless Bardock reveals his hand.

 

It makes him frown.  Something of Gine made it exclusively to Raditz’s intuition, and it knocks Bardock for a loop at the best of times. He shifts the stalk in his mouth, face drawn oensive and tight.

 

“Hn.”

 

Raditz turns his head pointedly toward him in Bardock’s peripherals. “How interesting; please, do go on.”  Gine’s intuition but not her frankly freaky patience.

 

“Sure,” Bardock punches out before the nagging persists, “I saw something.  And I have a promise to keep. Speaking of, we’re creating an oath, right now.”

 

Bardock faces his son, arm outstretched and tail swaying lax from his waist.  Raditz looks at him like he’s grown a third head.

 

“You’re serious,” his tail loosens in response but doesn’t fall.  

 

“Deadly.”

 

“You have to tell me what I’m agreeing to, or I won’t.”  

 

“I know.”  

 

Raditz considers him then, the infamously reclusive and famously brilliant veteran, tense and searching for the words to explain something at least as important to him as the doom of their planet somewhere around the height of Raditz’s sternum, with one arm - his one single arm floating in an aborted grasp between them.  Bardock notices and drops it.

 

“We have to kill this guy,” Bardock says; the words come out so thickly low Raditz can hear the rattle of his timbre, he sounds almost wounded and that makes about as much sense as… nothing.  “I don’t know exactly why, but the end of the Cold Empire hinges on this kid’s death right here, right now.”

 

Raditz stares in disbelief.  The exploitation of their race, starving lower class, blood-soaked missions, and -

 

The attempt on their planet, the loss of almost half their people.  The long standing insult to their culture. All of it loops endlessly in his head and his fists curl at his sides.

 

“I need you to let me antagonize him, and we have to kill him, no matter what.  No matter who he is.” Bardock says, eyes so dilated, so pitch dark from where he looks up at Raditz under his hair that he can see the steel reflect off the back of Bardock’s eyes and he realizes that this choice, between the end of the Colds and the death of one Saiyan, is difficult for him.  Raditz can’t fathom why, so he makes the decision for them.

 

Raditz clasps his father by the single sturdy forearm, unfurls his tail as a show of trust and nods to him, swearing his cooperation with whatever hair brained scheme Bardock is so tight lipped about that he can’t confide the details beyond asking for support.  

 

Bardock doesn’t relax.  Once he’s confirmed several traditional oaths under his breath, he’s spinning around on his heel and pulling up a topographical map on his scouter.  

 

“It’s not far away.  Let’s take it easy, yeah?  Haven’t been to a new planet in awhile,” he’s almost cheerful despite his misgivings, and Raditz follows him without another question or blessedly even another word.  By all Gods Bardock cherished him but it was a little too much to bear at times.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, okay. Throwing this mess out here because - and believe me - this isn't getting anywhere if I tweak it to my satisfaction. It has given me a better idea of where my writing needs work, though, so cheers.
> 
> If my narrator isn't super reliable ( ; D) that's either a happy mistake or a super happy mistake. Because I want a bit of that. For science.


	2. Contact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may see something familiar about the art! The pose is based off of Toriyama's DBall cover for Chapter 95: The One Where Commander Red was Bread, or something. Here's a link if you'd like to see: https://dwgkfo5b3odmw.cloudfront.net/manga/thumbs/shonenjump/dragonball/thumb_82_DGB08_95_web.jpg

  
  
Chichi finds Goku sat up against the tree behind what used to be his home; what functions now as little more than a shrine to his dragon ball and the old guardian of Paozu.  He lay with a leg outstretched, one foot drawn up to his inner thigh, arms loose and palms open to sky with his chin tucked down into his chest. He snores too - a startlingly un-cute and characteristically _him_ endearment she discovered the night before, undisturbed by her approach.  She tucks her uniform skirt under her thighs to kneel on the balls of her feet, considers waking him up before he sleeps the rest of that beautiful day away.  Instead, The light dappling his brow distracts her by rustling through his hair. This is likely the first time he has been truly comfortable since the few days approaching their matrimony.  She thinks back a bit further, because it could have been weeks. The wedding planning proved unexpectedly involved, and not just for him. He looks so comfortable, and yesterday was - everything, amazing, all she could ask for.  Both of them are so exhausted, she could join him. Her pants would get dirty. She frowns.  
  
_That decides that, then._  
  
He snorts at her jostling but doesn’t wake until she leans back against his chest, fully situated in his open lap and legs tangled with his.    
  
“Huh, uh?” He intones thoughtfully.  
  
“Go back to sleep you lug,” she pulls his stiff arms about herself as well, might as well cash in on those guns now that, well, they’re hers.    
  
Goku gapes a yawn big enough to displace Chichi from her comfortable recline; she manages not to complain before he settles in properly once more.  His breathing evens out almost instantly, and for a long peaceful few minutes Chichi bobs on the rise and fall of his chest. This meditation drags her eyes from the saturation of their valley to where the toes of her shoes extend just past his - and they drop further, until she’s nodding off in his grasp.    
  
Goku murmurs something indecipherable against her ear. “What’s that?” she doesn’t open her eyes.  
  
“Gran’pa used to nap with me out here sum’times,” he takes his time to enunciate more clearly but loses track of the effort on the tail end of his sentence, voice so thick with sleep that she imagines she can feel the rumble from his sternum.    
  
She hums along, hesitant to break rhythm and lose the full-bodied relaxation they’re sinking into.  She wants to tell him they can nap out here as often as he likes now, but the thought slips and she wants to get back to aforementioned napping.  Goku sighs in agreement to the unvoiced decision, and they properly drift off.  
  
  
Goku goes rigid underneath Chichi.  Her eyes snap open. They’re both on their feet in moments; Chichi springs to a crouch, defensive and low to the ground where she can survey for the cause of his panic.  His eyes are locked somewhere southwest, squinting. He opens his mouth to say something but a gust of wind rips the words from his throat and he’s in front of her, teeth clenched and peeking around his guard at whatever it is that’s definitely gunning for them.  The wind finally stops; the respite doesn’t keep his blood from running cold.  
  
“Ah, there you are.”  
  
A man stands above him - floats above him, really.  Goku can tell from his posture that the technique isn’t quite like his bukujutsu ken, maybe more like Piccolo’s.  It definitely affords him better aerial dexterity; that’s clear at a glance, which - interesting and all. But this guy looks just like Goku.  
  
Exactly, uncannily like him.    
  
“Goku,” Chichi hisses and he edges back toward her.  
  
The man drops straight down to solid ground, where they can take in the resemblance better, and beyond that their almost more uncanny differences.  The skin tone, the scars, his height. A gap in his silhouette perhaps tactlessly halts Goku’s appraisal. He catches himself almost sheepishly, eyes snapping back to the man’s face.  The stranger definitely noticed, but he takes Goku by surprise with an oily smirk. Not-Goku puts his best foot forward, presenting the hole in his guard almost as a taunt, a dare.  
  
_I’m so much more dangerous than you think._  
  
Goku tenses. He tries to talk again; he thinks the man was waiting for it because he shouts over him the moment he opens his mouth.  
  
“Raditz!  Come here and meet Kakarot.”    


That almost throws him, but Goku’s indignance rings louder.  “I don’t want your carrots, thanks!”  


The stranger looks at him like he said something weird.  Chichi interjects.  
  
“Who are you and what business do you have with us?”  Goku can tell by her tone that she’s more impatient than upset and that - that’s bad because she might just attack this guy -  
  
_These guys_ , and she can’t feel them.    
  
Although the second man lighting down behind the first doesn’t hold a candle, he’s huge and definitely at least twice clear of Goku’s league.  The quality of his ki lacks consistency but the sheer strength on its own would have been enough to jelly Goku’s knees. Big-Hair stands behind Not-Goku looking uncannily the same in a different way; although,Goku can’t place the souring look on his face well enough to get a gauge on him.  If Bulma were here, she might have described it as pensive.  
  
That or fucking pissed.  
  
Goku doesn’t get that far, because soon the look is shelved and Big-hair, Raditz apparently, smarms as nastily as his smaller compatriot.  And clearly they’re affiliated; even if one’s got uncomfortable looking shoulder pads and a lot less coverage they wear armor of similar make tied off by strange fuzzy belts.  Both of them have colored eyepieces sparking with indecipherable read-outs clipped to an ear.  
  
“Bardock, are you sure this is Kakarot?  His power level is pathetic. He barely beats that other guy,” Raditz says, crossing his arms almost as if to accentuate the size of them.  Somehow that riles up Goku as well.  
  
“I’m Son Goku, not Kaka-whatsit!  But…” Goku trails off into a nervous chuckle and takes another step back toward Chichi.  “I have a feeling ya might be looking for me anyways.” Raditz has that funny frown on his face all over again and Goku ignores it.  He feels like looking away from his body-double is much more dangerous.  
  
“There’s no mistake,” Not-Goku, no - Bardock pipes up.  The quiet pitch to his voice almost makes Chichi bite her tongue, because it’s so different - and she heard him before, but that is her husband’s sound spoken by another man like it was his to start with.  He continues, “do tell, though. You don’t recognize your Saiyan name, do you? Why am I here.” Bardock tilts his head just a tad, glances just past Goku at the Earthling on her hackles behind him. Goku starts.  
  
“Chichi, take the dragon ball and run!”    
  
Goku drops into a wide stance before she can object and presses the spread tips of his fingers to his temples.  The strangers only look unimpressed long enough for their glasses to blink warningly at them and then -  
  
“Solar flare!”    
  
Goku grabs Chichi by the arm and breaks for the shrine, she catches on before half of the first oath has fallen from Raditz’s mouth and is squarely on her own two feet when Goku pushes her through the doors.  He turns on a dime; bellows, “Nimbus!”  
  
Then his skull cracks against the ground, and Raditz stands over him still trying to blink stars out of his eyes.    
  
Goku finds himself more surprised than actually hurt, the force was enough to knock him over but the larger man only grazed him with a kick, probably led by Goku’s voice to his location going by his lack of precision.  But his voice? It can’t be…  
  
Raditz can’t sense energy.  

  
Goku sweeps his feet out from under him and twists catlike on the momentum to upend himself; he springs backwards away from Raditz to entice him to leave the shrine, which the larger does with growling gusto.  Ground regained, Raditz snarls and dives for him faster than Goku can react but he was prepared enough for this, hand already fisted around a ball of Earth that he sprays about the height of Raditz’s face with a horizontal swipe.    
  
Goku’s haste to gain distance works against him here, he can’t divert Raditz’s momentum from this position so he takes the brunt of a massive creature many times his strength barreling into him full-force.  Trucks would never see this guy coming.  
  
Raditz howls above him, blinking dirt from one eye then giving it up for lost to glare lopsided down at the little shit choking on the ribs that crack under Raditz’s firmly planted boot.  Right, the glasses thing-y. Looks like Goku’s plan to blind him would only go so far.  
  
“Alright, I don’t give a shit how or why you’re alive, brother.  You’re a pain in the ass and will pay dearly.” Raditz grinds his heel a little deeper just to see Goku squirm.    
  
“Raditz.”  Bardock growls warningly about something Raditz can’t begin to care about. It does, however, give him pause.  


“B-brother?” Goku gasps in the reprieve.  


Raditz looks conflicted for a long moment, so eases his boot far enough that he more pins Goku than crushes him.  The smirk worms its way on back to his face.  
  
“Yeah, see - we came to… recruit you.  Bring you back to your station. You couldn’t wipe out even a low-level planet like this, so you’ll be waiting quite a while to get a promotion _if any._ ”

 

“Who-,” oh that smarts, Goku croaks through grit teeth to talk, “who are you?”  
  
“WE, as you so seem to have forgotten, are Saiyans, Kakarot.”  What Goku mistook for a fuzzy belt unfurls from Raditz’s waist and curls with startling dexterity about his hips.  Goku stares, shocked into silence. “Don’t you remember your big brother and dear old dad?”  
  
Goku can only sit bewildered, grasps for straws somewhere in his frazzled, no good brain because he needs to keep the conversation going, distract them from Chichi.  
  
Another pair of boots shift gravel by his head.  Bardock crouches over him, hand reaching for his face and Goku has nowhere to run so he lays supine.  Bardock grabs him around the jaw to push his head at an odd angle and inspect - well, something. Goku realigns his head as soon as he lets go; Bardock growls and pushes him back hard enough that Goku worries about whiplash.  He doesn’t move.  
  
“Don’t move,” Bardock says.  


Goku growls back.  Bardock ignores him to feel along his hairline.  Whatever he finds doesn’t seem to satisfy him because he cards his fingers through Goku’s hair, parting by section before he pauses.  “Head trauma,” he says. Goku can feel Bardock tracing the split in his skull almost from one ear to the other and it has him pulling up dirt under his fingers.  “Massive head trauma. You asked if he remembers us and well, this is probably why he doesn’t. He’s lucky to be alive.”  
  
“Wait - you don’t remember?  I guess it’s not unheard of, there have been cases of… _naturalized_ Saiyans before but this is pretty extreme.  What, did you let them take your tail too?” Raditz spits down at the youngest.  
  
“Calm down.  Kakarot.” Bardock smacks his cheek to distract him from glaring at Raditz from the corners of his eyes.    
  
“We’re a race of warriors from space. We depopulate planets and sell them to  the highest bidder.  
  
“You were sent here to do just that.  You hit your head at some point - and you failed.  We’re here to give you a second chance. Lucky for you your lunar cycle is matching up so this should be pretty easy - wait.”  Bardock glances at Raditz’s boot.  
  
“No tail, well whatever.  If you bring us the bodies of one hundred of this planet’s natives then we’ll accept you back into our ranks and conquer the stars together.  You can start with that female in your hut, deal?” Goku knew - knew they’d threaten her but it doesn’t stop the involuntary jerk of shock that runs through him, because they want _him_ to do it.

 

There’s something off about that.  With the boot crushing him and all.  Goku swallows every panicked thought to snarl up at Bardock, sitting pretty above him.  
  
“You’re lyin’.”  Keep them distracted, keep them interested.  
  
“Oh, about what?”  His son is laying bait, rather transparently really, but he’ll bite.  Bardock’s hunch rears its ugly head to call what is either a bluff or something real interesting.  He cradles his chin in his red-sleeved palm.  
  
“I don’t know what ya really want - but it’s not that.  I won’t let you take our dragon ball for a wish, at the very least.”  Their conversation is interrupted by sound smearing, something accelerating through the atmosphere so fast that the warping almost shudders.  Both Raditz and Bardock gawk at a yellow trail carved through the clearing, hurtling so far away that whatever left was already quiet and out of sight.  That girl -

 

Bardock raises an open palm to where he estimates that girl ran off to, on some vehicle or something - he doesn’t quite care because an attack with a wide blast radius like this will certainly do the trick.

 

Goku locks onto Bardock’s ki, almost too massive to make sense of but it’s there, Goku can track how the energy coalesces without subtlety.  He estimates the precise moment the spark gathered in Bardock’s palm will catalyze.

 

“Looks like she won’t count toward your hundred, Kakarot”.

 

Goku snaps out of his concentration, plants his foot deep into the dirt and coils the other leg.  There’s more strength in Goku’s legs; he’ll need everything he’s got so, in a startling show of flexibility and a strangled shout, he whips his foot into Bardock’s arm.

 

Just when the energy primed.  He only nudged Bardock really, but the shot goes wide - bites a hole big enough in one of the nearby mountains that they can all see it hit the ocean beyond.  The horizon blooms with a morning sunset.

 

Bardock punches Goku in the face.  

 

Goku actually blacks out for a minute, blinks the clarity back to his eyes to find he’s turned away and there’s a sizeable spray of blood arcing away from his face.  He probes his teeth with his tongue - somehow only finds a shredded cheek and gum line. His cheekbone however.

 

“Don’t defend them, Kakarot.  You don’t want to know what happens to traitorous Saiyans,” Bardock growls.  It’s almost more terrifying that he hasn’t raised his voice. Almost. Goku looks back at him; works his sore jaw.  He spits in Bardock’s face. Bardock wipes away the blood, glances up at Raditz.

  
Who nods and removes his boot from Goku’s sternum to slam it through his knee.  The crack is sickening; worse than splintering, the kneecap almost powdered underheel.  Goku can’t draw enough breath to scream, so he slams his own head back into the ground and gasps rattling wheezes for what little he can get.  Some morbid part of his brain thinks asking Shenron to let him walk again might be disrespectful. Raditz hauls him by up by the hair, ready for more but this guy, simple and dumb and totally broken… chuckles.  Despite them. “You can’t sense energy, huh?”  
  
Both Saiyans stare at him.  He laughs wide and open now, eyes crinkled shut and cradling his smarting ribs, their gobsmacked expressions the icing on his cake.  “Ya’ can’t, haha, you can’t track her. She has it, and you need all seven for yer wish.”  
  
Bardock bites back his indignance.  This guy could be several things: full of it, lying, or brain damaged.  Bardock chews on that for a second, considering the headwound he found earlier.  He finds his ground somewhere in these confusing snippets of information, enough to lead on.  “So it’s really any wish?”  
  
Goku laughs again.  “I hope so, I used ‘em to revive my friends.”  
  
Bardock and Raditz look at each other, then back to him.  All these years, all this time. They’re finally reunited and - Kakarot’s lost it, but.

 

_But…_

 

_If this is true._  
  
Bardock realizes that his son has something he needs to live to tell him.  


Then a string of energy barrels through his children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darn, really wanted to be off planet by the time I put this out but the second half wasn't gonna make it and I made myself a deadline. Oh well, I just really like meaty chapters. Really gotta admire the people that write them. : )


	3. Foamy, Blithely

The blurry constant between his subconscious and what - maybe, might be, could be wakefulness, is foam.  
  
_Foam,_ Goku thinks.  It’s the best word that comes to mind, in whatever nebulous state _that’s_ in, because stringing together self-awareness seems a ways off.  He’ll find that bit of himself - that handles comprehension and other complicated stuff when it comes to him.  For now, he sits astride this foamy sensation.

  
It ebbs, he can only really compare it to the little island he spent really, very little time on as a child.  He remembers taking nimbus to the cliff-faced shores, where the ocean ate under the jutting coast to stick his hands in and feel the sand sink away under his feet.  Moving through the water interested him just as much, the extra pull on his muscles just to take those extra tired steps taught him more about how the muscles in his legs, back, and stomach connected.  It settled him like that heavy blanket he got to sleep under in the colder months at Paozu. Sometimes he’d come out after training just to roll in the surf, lay out where it was cool and shallow enough that the foam tickled him from foot to chin without submerging him.  That was this. The promise that when he went home, Krillin would tease him for being such a bumpkin, so fascinated by childish things like the beach and he would laugh high in his nose because that was such a silly thought - that growing up meant you had to pretend to stop enjoying it.  Old man Roshi would Grouse about the hour, and Lunch would wipe the sand and salt from the corners of his eyes without ever letting a grain catch his water-line. Or knock him one upside the head, but she always hit him soft, and no matter how Lunch felt when he made it home she would slide him the same sweet-bitter hot drink across the counter when Krillin and Roshi were paying less attention to proffering food from her than watching the teevee.  So that’s all foamy.  
  
He’s laying in the surf, except it’s not just tickling him on the surface of the water - he’s been engulfed.  It’s all around him, fevers and chills ricochet down his back to clarify his density - his weight. And weight - that’s coming back.  
  
With some vengeance.    
  
His chest feels like it’s clamped in a vice. His limbs are unresponsive around him in some vague articulation he can’t place because something about the feedback is shot.  They’re not strained but they weigh so much; he can’t find his own center of gravity.

  
Something beeps not-so-far-away.  
  
Goku anchors himself by it, pulls those last dregs of himself back into his body where he can lift his arm, squint his eyes open against that tickling and that burns so he screws them shut again.  His wrist rolls clumsily to accommodate his knuckles coming into contact with some barrier. The feeling doesn’t seem to have returned to his extremities yet. Goku does his best to flatten his hand on the surface.  He pushes.  
  
It shatters.    
  
The torrent of fluid about bounces whatever is attached to his face - and by extension head - on some kind of padded  surface. He ends up half in and half out of what seems like a dome-based bath,unable to fall farther by the functional umbilical attached to his face.  Goku groans. He feels like he’s gonna be sick.  


Goku pulls himself painfully onto an elbow, wrestles with the hard plastic-like material that’s forcing only so much air into his lungs when he’s starting to hyperventilate, rationed intake effectively choking him.  
The mask clatters away just in time to dry heave bile onto the surface below him.  The throwing up would have been bad enough if his ribs didn’t burn with every gasp for air or convulsion.  His position certainly doesn’t help - Goku twists rather breathlessly until he slides stiff to the ground..  The floor is hard and wet - covered in what feels like beads, but inexplicably hums warm against his cheek. No time for that, though.  He coughs, gasps open mouthed for stale air just to feel his lungs expand to capacity. That hurts too, but he can do it so he counts his blessings.    
  
That beeping won’t stop either.  Goku blinks one eye open. That foam stuff still stings; it’s not so bad out here in the open, though.  The other one follows suit. And that all brings to attention…  
  
The beeping is some kind of ovular button-laden interface stuck right out the ground on a pole.  The base melds with whatever domed tub he dragged himself out of. Looking down, it comes to his attention that he is naked, and his chest is plastered with a massive seal.  By the tugs he feels twisting his back he can guess whatever gave him the bandage had an exit wound. Further down he finds  
  
Oh, what the darn is that.  
  
Some kind of metal thing clamps  in several places above his knee and stretches below his calf.  It holds his knee unyielding at an angle, and completely plates over his kneecap.  The pins and needles aggravating his leg seem to skirt the piece entirely - Goku can’t imagine why.  He also doesn’t want to look at it for very long; he hopes those pins aren’t buried in the places they _look_ like so he swallows hard and pays attention to something that isn’t sharp and pointy and definitely in his skin.  The room, good start.  
  
His surroundings are dim, no windows and underlit by several dome-capped tubs set into the ground around him.  One of those tubs is deconstructed it seems, panels pried out of seams Goku wouldn’t have noticed if the gutted evidence didn’t lay before him.  Stripped wiring has been pulled open to expose the noded boards inside in several places, and the basin seems to have been removed entirely. The glass-like dome sits propped against the machine, it all reminds Goku of Bulma’s workspace when she couldn’t be bothered to go out for new parts.  In her haste to finish a new project, she would dismantle her last great passion in order to make something new. Tools are scattered haphazardly enough he could mistake the workspace for hers, although these make even less sense to Goku than what she uses so he doesn’t try to break his head open on _that_ beyond, _I should go see Bulma again soon._    
  
_Someone’s coming._  
  
Goku dives on instinct  to the doorwall behind another one of the tanks, where he might be obscured from whoever enters.  He pulls his stiff leg out of view just as the room floods bright, but the quick movement turns his stomach on itself several times over so he tilts his head back against the wall and counts his breaths silent.   Conversation follows.  
  
“...old Cold tech really is buggy, what a rip off.”  
  
“We were getting it for close to nothing, so -”  
  
“... will be needing immuno-boosters for several weeks going forward.  We can set -”  
  
The procession goes quiet before a familiar voice says, “Damnit.”    
  
Goku knows that ki.  He should have been concentrating on feeling his surroundings; he may not have the same long-range capabilities as Kami but he’s pretty sure he should have noticed that Bardock was nearby.  Bardock can’t feel him, but he found him before somehow. Goku plays it safe and obscures his ki. The energies shifting around him clarify; he concentrates on their movements while he waits for an opening.  
  
“Guard the door, scouters on.”  
  
_Well that’s out the window._

 

“No readings?  He could have escaped but he can’t have gotten far enough for his signature to vanish,” Someone says.  Bardock ignores them.  
  
“I know you’re still in here.   I have a nose.” Goku flinches, but doesn’t move.  He hears shoes cracking over those beads littering the base of the standing-bath Goku woke in.  
  
“With all due respect, we should be raising alarms-”  
  
“Piss off.” Bardock growls.  A beat. “You were sick, huh?  Your painkillers have some nasty side-effects, I wouldn’t run if I was you.  I have something to tell you about so come here.”  
  
Goku considers the older man’s words, then his leg.    
  
“If you don’t come out -”  
  
“Over here,” Goku croaks.  Bardock takes a long moment to walk over and doesn’t actually spot Goku until he’s nearly on top of him.  In fact, he kicks Goku’s leg.  
  
“Ouuuch.”  
  
Bardock jumps.   _“Stop that.”_ So he does. Goku smiles his nerves up at the older Saiyan, who imposes sans light-up glasses and armor but with a sleek pad attached to a band on his hip.  
  
“Why am I alive?”    
  
Bardock’s eyes harden.  He exhales quickly out his nose, shifts on his feet, rubs the back of his neck and glances away.  It’s strange beyond belief - seeing a familiar stranger pantomime Goku’s own gestures.  
  
“You want some grub?”  Bardock ignores Goku’s question.  
  
“Yeah.”  Goku nods gravely, “I think I’m gonna die.”  
  
Bardock bobs forward like he’s gone weak at the waist but he recovers quickly.  He also sounds like he mutters something derisive under his breath. He reaches above Goku to punch some kind of code into a keypad that escaped his attention, and the wall next to them shutters open to reveal a sink and some cabinets and drawers.  Goku receives a wet towel to the face with a minted toothbrush, that to his amusement dissolves in his mouth as he scrubs. Bardock kneels to jerk drawers open in whatever random order it seems to occur to him to do so until he cobbles together a sizeable bundle of fabric from their contents.  He tosses it in Goku’s general direction.  
  
The fabrics burst apart in his lap.  Goku looks up at Bardock, perturbed, the stem of what was once a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.  “I’m not eating this too, am I?”  
  
Bardock snatches the stick from him and bins it. “Put that on and I’ll take you to where the food is.”  
  
Goku brightens immediately, quickly makes sense of the clothing as it isn’t so dissimilar from things he has worn on earth.  He pulls on the underclothes and stretchy long-sleeved shirt with some difficulty, wrinkles his nose at the skirt’s volume of fabric, but supposes this is more practical to wear over his weird splint.   A belted tunic ties it all off. He forgoes the gloves mixed in, pulls on boots not so dissimilar from the ones Bardock wore - _is wearing._ Goku looks up to find the man in question offering his hand.  
  
“The Can is a walk away; you’re gonna need help getting there,” he says, but he looks distinctly uncomfortable offering said help.  
  
Goku braces the heels of his palms on the rim of the bath behind him, pulls himself until he’s resting against the glass, nearly on his own two feet.  He’s breathing hard all over again for the effort, but he figures it’s worth it.  
  
“You’re stubborn, I get it,” Bardock growls.  Goku frowns up at him, manages to push himself forward until he’s sure his good leg can take the weight, then he’s teetering in front of Bardock, standing on his own strength.    
  
“I kept up’ through a lot worse.”  Bardock takes pause at that. Then he frowns.    
  
“Yeah, if you try to walk there yourself I’m gonna punch your lights out.” Then the room flips.  
  
Goku’s ribs strain anew, and the lights swim on another aggressive bout of nausea.  He thinks he hears someone shout and Bardock reply curtly, but it’s difficult to tell because everything is moving and he wasn’t ready for all that action.  
  
The floor bobs closer and farther from him, someone’s heels flash in and out of sight below; Goku realizes with some astonishment that Bardock slung him over his shoulder and they’re already out in the hallway.  Goku scrabbles to prop himself upright, which hurts like all get out, so Bardock holds him in place with a firm hand fisted around his belt.  
  
“That’s,” _wheeze,_ “that’s dirty!”  
  
“Tough,” he bites.  
  
They move faster, and Goku suddenly finds himself more wary of falling and/or passing out, so he clings to Bardock like a lifeline, eyes screwed shut and sweating bullets.  When he looks up again he’s surprised to find those people from before following them, and they’re all staring. This is when he realizes that none of them are likely Earthlings.    
  
Bardock and Raditz may not have looked much like he imagined an alien might, and he’s used to the many strange species on Earth, but these people are undeniably not of his world; they’ve even got those weird eye-pieces to boot.  All are decked out in a dark and marginally less skin-tight set of uniforms than the Saiyans’, with strange bulky ballistic-looking devices strapped to their gauntlets and hips. He stares at the one walking closest, with purplish skin and a row of small horns cresting a fluffy mohawk.  They stare right back, their face hardens with mounting suspicion the longer they maintain eye contact. Goku blinks owlishly at them.  
  
“Is he always like this?” Goku asks, thumping Bardock’s armor.  He chooses to interpret the hint of sharp fangs they show him as the beginnings of a smile.  
  
“He has that reputation.”  Their voice resonates dual-toned, simultaneously high and deep and he thinks that it sounds nice.    
  
Goku barks a short if not painful laugh back, which seems to startle some of their procession.  Bardock jostles him somewhat vindictively by his waist.  
  
“Officer Masala, can it,” one of the other aliens says, a larger gruff creature with only one voice chides. His several eyes don’t seem to blink in sync, though - the ones visible beyond his visor.  
  
Once Goku has regained his bearings he shoots a conspiratorial grin at the officer, then swings away from them when Bardock turns a corner.  Bardock shoulders through a wide open doorway into a room humming with the din of food and conversation. The room suffers sudden muteness when they enter, but that’s normal enough that it doesn’t keep Goku from tossing his head about, eager to get an eyeful of the lively shared space with plenty of round tables and a few island stands of delicious smelling self-serve food.  The uniformed group that was following him surges along Bardock’s flanks to obscure him from curious and curious-looking onlookers. Goku thinks it’s a shame; he was as interested in seeing them as they he.  
Then he is painfully dumped onto a bench.  
  
“OW ow, what was that for?”  Goku growls up at Bardock, who promptly ignores him.    
  
“You lot keep an eye on ‘im, he’s dumb so he’s a flight liability.” Bardock grouses as he walks over to where the best smells are coming from.  Goku glares daggers into the back of his head then rights himself in his seat, turning to face the table properly. No one sits at it with him, he notices, but a couple of his - guards, he supposes, sit adjacent to him to fill that space.  Officer Masala and Big-Gruff-Guy stand with their arms behind their backs at either of his shoulders. At least like this he can see the room.  
  
The people scattered about have gone back to ignoring him, the chatter eases quickly and Goku notices flashing holograms scrolling with strange characters lining the ceiling.  More holograms drop from the domed walls like flags, with bright products flickering across or what looks like planets and miscellaneous information reading out, with graphs of who knows what cycling between walls of text and images.  One screen shows an alien delivering what Goku thinks might be live news coverage from a planet swarming with strange people, all pressed up against a stone wall overlooking an orange-tinted ocean where what _looks_ like horned whales breach the surface and -

  
Fly off.  Somewhere.  The xeno-journalist  gets more excited, Goku wishes for he knew what they were saying.    
  
Goku looks past that monitor, to the only window he’s seen since waking up.  It gapes open on a scene more confusing than the flying whales.  
  
A massive open deck lays far below them, bustling with people that look about the size of ants walking, playing.  There are various colorful stands lining a long walkway, closed in by the most diverse range of plants and trees Goku has ever seen.  A clock based by a sign laden building bares many faces to all corners of the plaza; glass capped tracks branching away from the deck makes it almost look like a transit center.  The deck tiers away with layers of round buildings, towers, and walking byways. It’s like a condensed West City lined with neon and capped off by a great clear dome. Beyond that is a sheer black drop into the night sky, with great walls of white hull dotted with observation decks and spidering walkways stretching out to encapsulate the dark like a great black bay.  Vehicles and signboards buzz in and out of the dark, flying down below to where Goku can no longer see them. It creating a dazzling display of colors, occasionally highlighting the unrecognizable starscape beyond.  
  
Something thunks in front of him.  The scents that reach his nose might have enticed him a minute before but now the sharp richness turns his stomach.  Even so he sits up while Bardock unloads massive piles of strange-looking food from an almost comically undersized cart to the table.    
  
Bardock sits a across from him, lays his own plate with the many dishes in front of him, then tucks in as aggressively as every person on Earth asked Goku not to.  Goku blinks at him.  
  
“What is this place?”  
  
Bardock rips a massive chunk of meat off of something with a fuzzy shell, sits up and stares at Goku, face clear and inscrutable while he chews through it.  He swallows.  
  
“Galactic Station 32, lucky you the asteroid it’s bolted to was passing by.  Your first station is one of the luxury floats,” Bardock says it as though it’s no concern, and his attention is diverted once more to mauling his mollusk.    
  
“We’re in space?” Goku asks.  Officer Masala shifts behind him.  
  
Bardock however, doesn’t even grace that with a verbal response he’s so intent on his food.  He does stop when he looks up and sees Goku staring at him rather than eating.  
  
“What’s wrong with you?  Eat.”  
  
“How far away did you take me?”  
  
Bardock balls a napkin in his hand and takes a swig of water from an oversized open cup. “Aah. Yea, yer’ in space, Earth is four weeks out from here.”    
  
“Four weeks!?  Wow...” Goku leans back in his seat, looking back out the window in mild bewilderment.  Well, Chichi will definitely be pissed. Hold on. “I’ve been out for four weeks?”  
  
Bardock swallows thickly, drops his drink. “You had a shattered knee cap, several broken ribs, a cracked sternum, a hole about yea big,” Bardock indicates with his thumb pressed to his forefinger at the level of his eye, continues, “punched through your chest, and a concussion to boot.  I had to give you two chest seals and a splint. Put you on my pod’s life support - you were in and out for the ride back. _So_ ,” Bardock growls emphasis on his summary so that he doesn’t have to watch Goku float farther from the conversation, “you’ve been in recovery for a few days.  You wouldn’t have needed so much time if i could get you to a healing tank sooner. Very kind of you to last me the trip, though I can't say I know how.” _This guy doesn’t make much sense._  
  
“Someone _stabbed_ me?”  
  
The food must not all be that great because Bardock looks revolted.  Goku thinks he doesn’t actually need that fork - or to skewer that stack of cutlets so aggressively.  “No. Some green guy managed to critically injure Raditz and mortally wound you in one shot.”

 

_Piccolo?  Masking ki may really work on these guys, thank goodness._ Their tech could only do so much; he can count on Chichi’s safe escape. Then it occurs to him.  “Chichi! We were gonna have a baby!”  
  
Bardock makes an awful hacking noise.  “Oh no, Bulma told me pregnancies’re really hard so I would need to make sure to take care of Chichi - and she’s been alone four weeks!  I promised her! She’s gonna be so mad.” Goku leans forward onto the table and pushes one hand back into his hair. A loud slam rattles his teeth shut onto his cheek - he would have sprung from the table if he wasn’t forced back into his seat by the officers behind him.  His shout and the clatter of flatware drains the conversation of the rec hall, most eyes turned to where Bardock has upended his seat and slammed his palm through the warped tabletop.  
  
“I’m not going to be able to eat in peace, am I?” He spits menace to where the hissing synthetic material has petaled around his palm, ki crackling with unrestrained agitation.    


The awful flashes of chills race back, numbing him to the spot with shivers and sweat and rushing blood.  He can’t catch his breath; Bardock’s presence sears hot and stifling. Goku knows he riles people up sometimes, he thinks he may have bitten off more than he can chew.  
  
He doesn’t know where this instinct to cower comes from, but it tastes worse than the bile he spat up in the medbay.  Goku sets his brow just as hard and sharp as Bardock’s. “Pass me that thing, please,” he matches for pitch, voice even despite him.    
  
“...Get it yourself,” Bardock presses, hissing ice through his teeth.    
  
“Can’t reach it.” Goku rebukes.  
  
“You’re scared,” Bardock says, and it takes the sum total of Goku’s will plus some not to flinch, “so back off.”  
  
“I’m hungry.”  If Bardock is going to ask to talk then act cagey, it’s not his concern - he wouldn’t get a thing out of butting heads with this guy.  Yet.

 

Even if he’s a jerk.  
  
Goku gives up on the dish he requested - he already couldn’t recall exactly which it was - to tear into whatever happens to be in front of him.  It takes several mouthfuls before he doesn’t feel green with every swallow. Soon the food is going down easier; Bardock has righted his seat and sits down to continue his gorging - fine.  Goku chews more on trying to get a beat on his taciturn sire than the food; he’s unpredictable and so beyond Goku’s threshold of _terrifying, way too strong_ that the idea of challenging him - Goku would prefer not.  The edge of something white-hot is there, but injured and in the absence of adrenaline the most he can muster is a weak defiance.    
  
_There will always be someone stronger._    
  
And someone stronger flickers aboard the station.    
  
Goku drops a fruity exotic something.  Bardock’s tablet chimes a merry ascending tone; he freezes at the sight of the readout blinking up at him.  
  
“Sooner than I thought,” he mutters.

  
Goku’s voice does shake this time.  The sharpness of this ki tastes mists like mtel on the back of his tongue.  
  
“Haha, there a lot of crazy-strong guys out here?”He directs his question to his balled fists, nervous grin splitting his cheeks.  
  
Bardock’s brow furrows, curiosity pushing through his alarm. “You really can sense power, can’t you?”  Goku’s eyes flick up to Bardock’s, where he can see how far Goku has paled.  
  
“Hn.  I should be putting you back under but a real prick wants to see you.”  
  
Goku’s mouth quirks into an involuntary grimace. “Why would anyone here want to see me?”  
  
Bardock growls again, but the lack of pertinent targets renders his rage impotent.  “Because your brother is a prick too.”  
  
Goku laughs at that. “Far as I’m concerned I ain’t got a brother.”  
  
A beat.  “Finish up.  
  
“And just so you know,” Bardock stuffs his face with a last massive bite of some kind of veggie and knocks back the rest of his water, “you don’t have to worry about that girl, she can’t have your kid.”  
  
Goku blinks. The grimace widens back into a confused smile. “‘Scuse me?”  
  
“Saiyans have a pretty hard time conceiving to start.  Our numbers’ve always been relatively low, and - well.” Bardock looks Goku up and down, something biting the edge of his tongue.  “You can’t sire children. It’s kind of rare, but you can only carry kids.”  
  
Goku stares.    
  
Bardock frowns.  “You wouldn't want to have a child with an alien like that anyways. Forget it, someone stronger will come along and take care of you.”  Somehow the words ring the same kind of false Goku rebuked on Earth, as though Bardock doesn’t necessarily mean what he says. Hanging around this guy does a number on Goku’s head.  
  
“Idunno what yer on about, and I’m gonna ask you to explain later, but if it’s like how Master Roshi and Krillin like girls and stuff - that doesn’t interest me. I promised Chichi.  I’m gonna protect her and what she wants.”  
  
Bardock snorts, cleans his face and leverages himself from the table. “Good luck, kid - just don’t bring it to me.  Ask your doc or Raditz later. And hurry up.”  
  
Goku is about to ask how he should be expected to follow when someone clears their throat behind him.  Officer Masala proffers him a braced stick. With some testing and a bit of food in him Goku finds it’s all he needs to stand and walk on his own as long as he takes it slow.  He thanks them merrily; they only cross their arms and nod, though he thinks they warm attitude brightens them.  
  
The party ventures away from the more spartan white-walled law enforcement decks, as Big-and-Gruff explains during the first leg of their trip, to where decks expand into spacious, hub-like chambers dedicated to patent livery.  They share the same domed architecture; however, there’s an appreciable presence of latticed screens and textile banners over the, in Goku’s opinion overbearing, holo-monitors, even if they turn colors. He makes up his mind to shake his posse and explore later, see a lot more than the glimpses he manages.  Their brisk pace forces his concentration on the heels front of him rather than his surroundings. The tasteful but more casual decks give way to someplace… misconfittingly opulent. The ceilings are high and bannisters iron-wrought; various illuminated seals line the corners of halls and ceilings. Organic elements become more common: real plants, the front end of a biodome chiming with the telltale chirp of avians, a low, polished to glowing set of wood inlaid doors.  That immense, chilling ki - along with several other incredible energies swirl behind it.  
  
Bardock dismisses their guards.  Once he’s sure they’re out of earshot he looks sidelong to where Goku gasps for breath.    
  
“Something on my face?” Goku asks challengingly. Bardock fists his hand in the back of Goku’s tunic and hisses for him to hush up.  
  
“You don’t say a word.  If they ask you anything, you can only say yes or no or let me answer.”  Goku has to strain to hear Bardock, even with his newly-christened Saiyan senses.  
  
“No promises,” Goku swats him off, which accomplishes very little but Bardock takes the hint to let go.  
  
“I’m serious.  You can’t say anything to them, especially not about Earth.” He’s about to ask why Bardock - well, he’s not sure.  He doesn’t know why Bardock was on Earth, to start. He doesn’t think Bardock meant to bring him here and the way he attacked - he assumed Bardock was after the Dragon Balls. Goku’s mouth clamps shut on the realization that Bardock, after assaulting and kidnapping Goku, may aim to protect him.  He’s so preoccupied by the revelation that he misses when the door swings open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blbbbbbbbllllllblbb Okay enough of my dramatics. Here. This one fought me tooth and nail and I still feel behind on story beats but, hey! I'll wrestle this beast into submission. Ah well, I suppose I'll just have to keep trying to change that.


	4. Drip

Vegeta’s timepiece chimes a tune. He taps the glass at his temple and the readout jumps to his wraparound shield lenses. That walking disaster is definitely Bardock - he’s so overwhelming the courier system barely picks up the other power level hobbling along with him. Curiously, his readout doesn’t seem to have changed much from the levels reported on Earth. Thinking back, Raditz’s intel on power levels, among other things, came across decidedly dodgy.  
Interesting.

“They’re here.” Nappa’s courier chimes an interval off of Vegeta’s. They’re all exhausted of milling about, it seems; terrorizing waitstaff only entertained so much - and they’ve since been left to their devices in a profligately decadent flat for several many ticks. At least they had the decency to leave food. Vegeta would sooner kill his companions than arrange to satisfy their appetites.. Raditz ceases his tinkering with their supply cases to stand for the door.

“Fan-tastic.” Vegeta leverages himself to his feet from his meditation on, something like a chaise-longue. He doesn’t bound, because bounding is for excitable and generally less collected people than Vegeta; no, he takes a long few steps over impractical floor-inlaid furniture and brocaded throw pillows.

Raditz reneges his beat for the door to balk at Vegeta reaching out to open it himself. However uncouth the act it is worth keeping the coward on his toes.

He smiles back at Raditz, “I’ll let them in myself.”

The door swings to reveal Bardock, as well as his sweat-soaked and pasty carbon copy, gaping like a fish at his father. Said double doesn’t seem to notice Vegeta until he’s speaking, but once he lays eyes he looks like he swallowed a stone.

“Bardock, son of Daikon,” Vegeta says, because he eats shit as a hobby, apparently. “Chief of Research and Development at the Saiyan Royal Institute of Technology, father, widower, and tactical genius.” Vegeta smirks through the last of it to remind the revered scientist that any title can be twisted into an insult with a tad bit of effort and tasteful implementation of cadence. He emphasizes the casual disrespect by leaning into the doorframe, arms crossed.

“‘S My honor,” Bardock says flatly, thumps his fist to his chest in salute.

“You bow to Vegeta when you greet him, third-class,” Nappa spits from somewhere behind them.

“Nhm,” Bardock brushes off the general’s aggression like a fly hair. “This is my son, Kakarot.” Bold, but Vegeta decides that the special occasion can warrant a waiver for his insubordination. Bardock also thumps Kakarot across the back, pushing him to stumble on his crutches; all in a moment he seems to forget his wisdom to be intimidated.

“Don’t tell people that - it’s not my name,” he grouses. Bardock shoots his spawn a solitary pointed glance before he resumes his bullet-proof inscrutability. If Kakarot gets the hint he doesn’t show it - either the kid is thick or thick-skinned.

Raditz slams something onto the counter. Kakarot glances at the clatter, but doesn’t comment. He looks back at Vegeta instead -

“I’m Son Goku. You’re Vegeta?” He asks.

Vegeta cocks an eyebrow, looks the guy up and down, then turns back into the room without answering. Nappa smirks from the low table as though he’s in on the joke and Vegeta resists his knee jerk reaction to force his teeth down his throat. Unfortunately he’s still stuck to the sycophantic fool - indefinitely.

Speaking of brown-nosing: Raditz stands, places his palm to his chest and bows. “He doesn’t know himself, my liege. He’s forgotten everything about being a Saiyan - including his mission and you.”

Vegeta waves a dismissive hand, calls behind himself. “Whatever. I’m sure -” he settles into one of the low chairs packed around their hors d'oeuvres with Nappa where he can face the clan of Bardock, ankle on one knee and arm slung over the back of his chair, wide, commanding. He plucks something round and smooth from the table to toss with just a touch of spin. He continues, “the story is quite interesting. Care to tell, Bardock?” He takes a bite, flashing his eyeteeth.

“Sure,” Bardock says, dripping flippance. He walks in without checking if his youngest follows, sitting across from Vegeta crossed legged and back straight, hand balled on his knee and diaphragm open.

Kakarot sidles inside and closes the door behind him. He remains standing on the edges of the room despite his clear exhaustion, black eyes cast about.

Bardock still isn’t talking.

“Well?” Nappa snaps.

“I’m starting?” Bardock plays the fool in words alone. Raditz grinds his teeth but doesn’t comment, only settles by Bardock to place a physical barrier between the renegade and Nappa. Vegeta’s patience begins to wear thin.

“What the fuck do you think? ‘Greatest mind of our time’ my ass,” Nappa takes a break from stuffing his face to snipe. Bardock blinks as though he’d just noticed Nappa, then tilts his head just a touch forward, smirk worming onto his face.

“Oh, Grand Vizier Nappa, great to see you again after that spar we had so long ago. Heard you didn’t get a boost for it. Pity that.” Bardock plucks a knob of some gluten based product from the table and chomps the whole knuckle.

Nappa clenches his jaw, eyes Bardock like he’s about to lay into him but Vegeta interjects with a barking laugh.

“Why were you on Earth?”

Bardock takes his time chewing. Raditz elbows him in the ribs. The older Saiyan looks sidelong at his son for only a moment before he swallows. Vegeta certainly heard rumors of the recluse - he imagines that were his children not here to undermine him he would be impossible rather than improbably tough to handle.

“Sightseeing,” He says. Raditz exhales a remarkably long breath.

“And that’s why you harassed a neutral station into sheltering yourself and your multiplying children,” Vegeta snarks.

Bardock stares.

Vegeta snaps, “How the fuck is his health, then?”

“Who?”

Vegeta growls warningly, “I don’t know, Frieza? What’s the status of your spawn.”

Bardock hums thoughtfully, then speaks.

“A day out from total recovery. His sternum maintains hairline fractures and we can’t take the splint off yet, but he’s mostly good to go. Otherwise,” Bardock un-pockets a folded visor and turns to his youngest, “c’mere, this concerns you.”

Kakarot’s frown turns into a grimace. “No, thanks.”

“Raditz, sit your brother down.” The elder rolls his eyes and is about to pull himself to his feet when Kakarot drops to the ground where he is, managing something like a sit around his stiff leg. Bardock huffs quickly out his nose before he slides on his glasses. A medical report tabs open on their devices while Bardock dictates the flavor.

“He’s fit for general space, but his immune system is underdeveloped. We’re hardy, our viruses more so, not to mention specialized - and like other children born around the end of Frieza’s subjugation of the Saiyans, he was reared in an incubation pod so he had minimal exposure as an infant. ‘Cept he still hasn’t been treated.” Bardock doesn’t lay off the sneer at the mention of Cold Tech, and all of the group at the table grimace at the reminder of the ill-advised practice.

“He’s got amnesia and his temperament did a total one-eighty from childhood. The former likely from head trauma, can't do more than sepculate about the rest.” Bardock wraps up succinctly. He doesn’t offer any more information.

Nappa laughs, “Looks like your progeny just doesn’t add up, low-class.” Raditz bristles.

“Shut up, Nappa,” Vegeta says, his eyes flicker across the report searchingly. “You really roughed him up. What are his Zenkai percentages?”

“Negligible.” Bardock takes another bite of something, Vegeta blinks at the man.

The subject of the conversation’s eyes are drooping, if he’s still on painkillers he’s liable to fall asleep.

“What about his tail?” Raditz asks. The subject of the conversation perks up just a bit, although he seems more cautiously interested than curious.

“Nope, he hit the cutoff sometime this past cycle. Luckily his hormones adjusted pretty well to the loss, he shouldn’t have any problems mating, beyond aesthetics. Kakarot,” Bardock turns back around to address the youngest. “Come here, now.”

Kakarot recovers from his disgust at the turn in conversation to glare at Bardock.

Raditz turns to Kakarot as well. The young warrior lays that same look to him, and Raditz sweats, shifty with trepidation. “Will you come sit with us, Kakarot?”

Kakarot’s face turns as blank as his father’s. Then he smiles lightly, and Raditz makes a face like he hit a potshot between an Arlian’s antennae at forty klicks.

How bizarre.

Kakarot slides lithe into their circle, and braces his hands on his one folded ankle.

“...Goku,” Bardock begins. That also seems to surprise him, because he steamrolls into his question. “You’ve lost fights on Earth before. Roughly how much stronger did you get from those beatings?”

Kakarot stares. Vegeta counts backwards to - hopefully - save himself a few blood vessels; luckily the young Saiyan gathers his wits before Vegeta’s fuse blows.

“I didn’t.” He answers simply, too taken aback to add any more. Bardock’s eyebrows knit, as though the answer conflicts with his intel.

Vegeta senses the lull in their interrogation and snaps. “You never lost a fight?”

“No,” Kakarot says, “lost plenty, nearly died a few times. I improved my technique from those if that counts. If i wanted strength I just trained a lot.”

Bardock looks like something has clicked for him, but his expression shutters hard before Vegeta can read into it.

Nappa laughs uproariously, which only grates on Vegeta’s developing migraine.

“Haha, the son of Bardock - no tail, pathetic power level, and he didn’t even get his old man’s ridiculous Zenkai Boosts. He’s completely crippled!”

Kakarot looks lost, but he must understand he’s being insulted, because his brow creeps down the longer Nappa brays.

“You can’t even call this guy a Saiyan!”

Vegeta agrees, but this headache gets exponentially worse the longer Nappa keeps his gigantic fucking mouth open. Kakarot interjects.

“You kill people and steal their planets!” He spits that at his father and brother. “Why would I want to be the same as you when you only use your strength to hurt people?”

That’s it, Vegeta is sick of these clowns. The table clatters, upended by Vegeta’s foot; the clear space the better to sneer over the injured man on the floor. “The Saiyans single handedly turned the tide of Frieza’s campaign to conquer every known galaxy. If it weren’t for us, no one would be free from his reign.”

“So what, you’re gonna stop once you beat this Freezer guy?” Kakarot bites back, rather foolishly. Vegeta cocks his head, chuckles deeply and doesn’t miss the way Bardock’s spawn flinches.

“Oh, no. The strong conquer the weak, and as the strongest warrior race it’s our right to take what we want.”

Kakarot’s eyes are wide, almost unsure, then something clicks for him, because he speaks, even if his voice shakes. “Then, you - Freezer; what’s the difference?”

Vegeta sees red.

Bardock may be about the only Saiyan alive that can challenge Vegeta, but his spawn certainly isn’t. He’s standing over the pathetic excuse for even a third-class before he can flinch, hoisting the scrambling mongrel by his collar until their faces are a scant few centimeters apart, his crutch clattering away. Wide-eyed, he grabs Vegeta’s wrists in a white-knuckled grip to prevent the material from tearing and dumping him onto his ass. He strains taught underneath him from the extension of his core, single supporting leg jammed acute to the floor.  There it is - the fear he should feel when threatened by a Saiyan of Vegeta’s calibre. “Fuck niceties - tell me about the dragon balls. What is on Earth that can grant wishes?”

Kakarot looks taken aback. This close Vegeta can see how the grey of his pupils are pinned near shut with adrenaline. He’s shaking, and his heart thuds hard enough to pound in both their ears - and it’s coming, he’s going to give, he’s going to cower and give Vegeta exactly what he wants.

He’s weak.

He’s no Saiyan, and Vegeta is the pinnacle of all they are - should be, and this pathetic little shit, with no tail - no pride, and knows nothing. That being a Saiyan, the greatest of all Saiyans, makes Vegeta an existence he cannot begin to question, because if Saiyans are glory - then Vegeta is absolution.

The gunmetal grey in the you man's eyes expand until there’s almost no black left, and Kakarot cracks their skulls together. Vegeta barely budges; Kakarot’s crown is split with blood but he’s snarling pure menace underneath him, eye to smoldering black eye, “Whatever you want, there’s nothing that can give it to you.”

\---

The next moment he’s bouncing off the ground, already choking on the impact but then there’s Vegeta’s fist, simmering with ki and arm coiled with pure potential energy. Goku’s senses capitulate toward that singularity, bending his perception to accelerate the inevitable impact that will smash his eggshell skull, jam the fleshy pulp of him, his life - his brain and -

_‘Son!’_

A weight seems to lift from his chest. He may not be able to see beyond the fist that aims to end him but he can feel his surroundings with crystal clarity. He gathers the space around him with his ki, suspending himself the way Bardock did on Earth; with no concept of gravity, up or down - creating an off-kilter defensive stance. This is the same position Raditz nailed him in before, but this time he can see everything and he may be slow, so much slower than Vegeta but just a bit is all he needs. He channels all the energy of an explosive wave into a single point in the center of his palms, as small as possible, as concentrated as he can.

\---

The dust from split rock kicks up under the impact of Vegeta’s fist, and Bardock and Raditz are on their feet, breath caught.

Underneath Vegeta, where only he can see - is his fist buried in artisan-cut stone, Kakarot’s extended hand arrests Vegeta’s reach at the shoulder, but only so far; using his longer arm to cushion Vegeta’s blow dislocated his arm. His other hand presses against Vegeta’s forearm, where he managed to redirect the force of his punch just far enough to save his mongrel life. Kakarot’s ear and cheek are badly burnt from energy,  and his chest heaves a frenetic rhythm.  He’s panting open mouthed, teeth bared; one eye squeezed shut and the other wide open, boring into Vegeta with what looks like -

Pain. That’s clear as day, by the way his breath races, but underneath he burns.

Victory. Excitement.

It’s only there a moment, because then he’s retracting his fist, and pushing it into Kakarot’s shoulder. The look dissolves into his screams.

It’s as though Kakarot’s caterwauling thaws them; Raditz and Nappa both attempt to bar Bardock from diving for Vegeta, who tosses off the General. Vegeta knocks away Kakarot’s scrambling limbs and plants his knee under his chin to hold him down, freeing his hands to flash his royal seal. Bardock freezes.

“I’m arresting your dumbass ankle-biter.”

Bardock is spitting. ”I have pardon from the King himself-”

“And I’m the Prince. Besides, it dismisses you and your coward son there. Not this deserter” Vegeta tucks the seal between his collar and his armor. “Did you really think you, the only Saiyan capable of opposing the Vegetas, could fuck off to Cold territory and no one would bat an eye? Don’t play me for a fool, Bardock.”

Vegeta stands, and pulls the gasping young man up to a half-kneel by his tunic.

Bardock grinds his teeth. “We’ll stay one more day!”

Vegeta actually laughs, “I say when we leave.” He heaves his prize meaningfully.

“If we leave now disease, infection, or both are going to kill him before you can. I need a day to get his immunoboosters ready, then you can take him.”

“Saiyans don’t care much for their young, Bardock. What has you so concerned?” Vegeta needles.

“I don’t,” He says quickly. Kakarot cracks an eye open to look over at Bardock, judging. “I just know there’s no way yer’ gonna get anything out of this guy before he dies.” Vegeta smirks, is about to point out the admission buried in his desperation when Kakarot - laughs.

“Oh, it’s Kami.”

Normally Vegeta would sneer at such turnabout adulation, but the way Kakarot cocks his head as though he’s listening to someone no one else can hear - stays him.

Nappa wipes his bloodied face, standing from where he was knocked through gaudy screens, “And now he’s losing it.”

Kakarot’s face does something complicated, his chin wobbles and he swallows away the edges of a frown. He flips his head up to look Vegeta in the eye, “You’re their prince, wow. The princes weren’t strong on Earth.”

Vegeta sniffs, says, “of course, a Saiyan’s pride is his strength - and I am Prince of the strong.” Kakarot’s bangs are plastered to his forehead, and he’s muddy pale, but all the tension drains from his face without a trace. He’s looking up Vegeta up and down with those new eyes, as though he found something, and so he decides.

He hates this face.

Vegeta punches him across the temple, and he’s out cold. He dumps him at Badock’s feet.

“Raditz, if your father makes any attempt to leave or contact anyone unnecessary for Kakarot’s treatment, you report it directly to me. Bring Kakarot to the hangar this time tomorrow; now, get the fuck out.”

__

_‘Son?’_

_‘I’m awake…’_ He thinks. He might be. Goku is aware that the light passing his eyes burns too bright even behind his eyelids, so he turns his head to bury his face somewhere warm and dark.

“Oh good, more blood, and I hate washing this stuff. Here -” It’s Raditz, who kneels to drop Goku’s legs, forcing him to stand.  He sounds annoyed, however he doesn't pull his arm from Goku's shoulders until he's sure he can stand on his own. “Can you hang on to me? I’m tired of carrying you like that.” Goku blinks blearily at him, he’s turning away and flipping most of his massive mane over one shoulder.

“He’s gonna get blood on you no matter how you do it,” Bardock grouses from - somewhere, but Goku doesn’t really care. Someone had the decency to push his arm back into his socket while he was out, it seems, but the muscles are swollen and tender so he has to concentrate to arrange his arms around Raditz’s neck. The older hefts most of him into the air by the backs of his thighs, relieving the pressure. This way Goku can see over his armor straps, and Raditz’s long hair settles warm over both their backs. Raditz huffs, grumpy no doubt, but he bounces Goku into a more comfortable position, so he figures he might not be so mad. “Whatever, conditioning this all is a nightmare anyways.”

Goku peeks the eye that doesn’t pull at his singed cheek open to Bardock, who looks vaguely disgusted. “Hey - when’s the last time you cleaned your armor?”

Raditz smirks. “Well, I was kind of busy on that last planet you picked me up from, and we were camping out in the wastes for a while… ‘

Bardock’s mouth drops in horror. Raditz laughs big and loud, “I’m kidding, this is armor I picked up here. No shoulder pads?” Raditz shrugs Goku for emphasis and they continue walking.

“Ugh, yeah right. Got it.” Bardock looks away, lip curled in annoyance.

Goku hums from Raditz’s back. “Where’s my dougi?”

“Whas’ that?” Raditz answers, thought he doesn’t sound particularly interested.

“My gi, my clothes from Earth.” Goku lays his warm cheek across the cool shoulder and - he thinks plastic in front of him. It’s hard and also bendy.

Bardock hums, then chimes in. “I’m cleaning it, you can have it back later.”

Goku hums. “Thanks, it’s my only one.”

Silence falls. Goku starts again, “I’m sorry, guys.”

Bardock turns in surprise. Raditz looks sidelong at him with wide eyes. He continues, “I’ve been actin’ like you all bringing me to space is some horrible thing, but I wouldn’t have met such strong people if you hadn’t come. There’s no one like you on Earth - I wouldn’t get better.

“I wanted to settle down and give Chichi kids, but uh - I’m hearin’ I can’t. So.” Goku tries not to choke on the last of it, because even if he’s not about to cry - not by a long shot, it’s difficult beyond words for him to speak aloud that he can’t make good on their promise.

They keep walking, apparently unsure of how to respond, but Goku doesn’t mind the silence. Bardock pipes up after a bit.

“I came to Earth to kill you, so you’re damn right you’re sorry. You should be grateful.” His eyes are hard, locked somewhere far ahead of them, and Goku does that odd laugh again.

“Yeah, thanks," Goku says, genuine.  Raditz looks like he’s swallowed a lemon, and he keeps glancing at Bardock like he fed it to him.

“Don’t even think about challenging those guys again, Kakarot.” Raditz says, with the kind of aggression Goku begins to understand is just his brand of concern. “They’re way out of our league - they’re elites. And Prince Vegeta is head and shoulders above even King Vegeta.”

Goku laughs. “I’ll be stronger soon, you’ll see.”

Raditz growls. “You’re already an adult - your power climb is gonna keep getting slower for a couple years - then you’re stuck. You can’t even get zenkai boosts.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Goku says, but Raditz can still feel him smiling.

“When Saiyans take mortal wounds our bodies protect us by coming back twice - sometimes many times as strong. It’s one of our greatest assets,” Bardock chimes in, although he sounds like he’s thinking about something else.

“I can’t wait,” Goku starts dreamily, “to take Vegeta on.” Raditz rolls his eyes.

“Your funeral.”

“Don’t give up, Raditz.” Goku says. Bardock looks over with interest, but Raditz simply doesn’t respond.

_‘I see, you really are one of them.’_

Goku huffs, tired. _‘Yeah, I want to learn more. Kami, how did Piccolo die?’_

_‘When Piccolo attacked you, your father killed him. Now that you’re away from Earth, I’ve tried to convince him to come train with King Kai, but... ‘_

_‘I’m not training that guy!’_ A nasally voice Goku doesn’t recognize interjects.

_‘Goku, this is King Kai, you could call him my superior,’_ Kami says.

_‘Yeah, your planet’s guardian wouldn’t be able to make this call from Otherworld without me. So, Son Goku, listen up. Your God here wants me to pass on my techniques to you so you can return to Earth and defend your planet, but that’s no good. Frankly, it’s not my concern, and the guys you’re with are stronger than me, BUT -”_

Goku flinches at the volume, he didn’t know that telepathic conversations could peak. Raditz grumbles about him keeping still, and King Kai picks up his thought, _‘I can tell you what you need in order to get strong enough to fight them. You just have to tell me a joke.’_

“A joke?” Goku says, incredulous. Then he realizes both Bardock and Raditz have stopped, are staring at him.

“I think Vegeta hit him harder than we thought.” Raditz says, slowly.

“Guys, say something funny! Please!” Goku begs.

_‘Uh uh, that’s cheating. I only help out funny guys, so if you can’t tell me a good joke, you’re on your own.’_

Goku throws up a hand to signal them to wait. “Stop, nevermind! Don’t say a thing.”

_‘Please, be reasonable King Kai…’_ Kami says, exhausted.

Jokes, Goku is no good with jokes! He certainly knows when something’s funny - Bulma makes him laugh all the time. That’s right! Bulma! She’s hilarious! And she definitely laughed at that thing he said when she was “sloshed” at the reception, though he didn’t quite understand why.

Bardock and Raditz look back to each other from Goku’s palpable concentration. They’re already back at the medbay, so Bardock just rolls his eyes and steps through the opened door. Inside the hovering folks - and Officer Masala! - are milling about, though they snap to attention when the Saiyans enter. Their faces collectively drop when they spot him, except the purple officer. They just look pissed. Wait - don’t get distracted!

_‘King Kai, what’s a decanter?’_

_‘You use ‘em to aerate wine. You’re losing me.’_ King kai doesn’t sound pleased.

Raditz walks the through the door, is about to ask Goku to stop being so squirmy again when he pitches forward over his waist and nearly does a header on the floor, but then he’s caught halfway forward. His head snaps back to Goku.

“Hold on! ‘If I go through I might lose my train of thought!” Goku has anchored himself to the door by barring his arms into either side of the frame, suspended by force with torso nearly parallel to the floor by how he's hooked his leg around Raditz.

“Really!?” He goes on to yell into the mental link. The guards are rushing over to help, Bardock looks like he’s going to hit him again, and Raditz is already trying to tug him through the doorway. “I thought that was when a horse ran backwards!”

Kami makes a noise like he’s being strangled.

Goku’s arms give out, and he and Raditz both drop to the floor, one spitting expletives. Goku props himself shakily on his elbows, breath bated.

_‘Gh’_

Oh no, it wasn’t funny at all.

_‘BAHAHAHAHA, hahaha, huhuhu.’_ What a bizarre laugh. _‘Haha, hmm. Right. That was okay, I think you have more of a flare for physical comedy.’_

Kami wheezes.

_‘Hm, alright. Normally I’d ask you to tell me another, but since you’re going to focus on fighting I’ll let it slide this time. Start prepping more material for me, though, you have a lot to learn.’_

Goku blinks once to the ceiling then let’s his head drop, head swimming with relief. _‘Thank you so much, King Kai.’_ Someone wraps a hand around his bicep, leverages him to his feet and slings his arm over their shoulder. “I’d threaten to beat the hell out of you for pulling that crap injured but I think your family’s got you covered,” Masala says lowly, guiding him to an examination bench. He doesn’t miss the telltale shimmer belying their opaque eyes scanning him up and down.

Goku chuckles. “It looks worse than it feels.” He has no clue what he looks like.

Masala hums that nice resonant tone with disbelief, “I bet.”

_‘I’ll contact you again once you’re all healed, though I’m not positive how much help it’ll be in your situation.’_

Soon Bardock and Raditz are only grumbling. The gruff person from before tries to start his examination but Bardock waves him off to flash lights into his eyes and take his pulse himself. The team produces disinfectants and several rattling bottles, uncapping and doling out pills for Goku to swallow and cottons for Bardock to swab with mechanical efficiency. Goku watches Bardock attentively, even if his consciousness is flagging.

“What?” He snaps without looking up,

“How can I have kids, then?” The blood drains from the scientist’s face. Goku makes eye contact with a stone-faced Raditz before he bolts out the door. Bardock whips around on the room to look for - something, Goku isn’t sure.

“Bastard.” Bardock curses.

“Really?” Goku asks, with genuine surprise.

“No, but he might as well be. Ugh, fine.” Bardock drags a box of tools from around that one pod and settles himself on it. The guards make themselves scarce, posting themselves outside the doorway currently shuttering closed.

Goku stares at the vacant room. Bardock snaps his fingers in his face for his attention. “Listen up, because I’m only gonna tell ya once. I don’t care if Vegeta punched out too many of your brain cells to remember - this isn’t happening again.”

Goku, nods. For some reason. It feels like he should.

“Right,” Bardock growls. “So.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dang it, though I do love puns.
> 
> Also, anyone know how to make the thing not count author responses to comments? I want to talk to y'all but... it feels like I'm inflating my interaction :' )
> 
> EDIT: (5/19/19) Alrighty so this was... underproofed. Even for me. So I ran through to fix some spelling/formatting/redundant language etc.. If I ever imply Vegeta is taller than he is, by accident or nah, I want one of you on standby to smite me.


	5. Nomen Numen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Been a bit bummed, but I don't want to stay away for long so I have this mini-thing for you. Because I can't forget the beautiful Earth ladies.

Finally.  The circuit board pulls away from its stubborn mounting, and Bulma flips it on the pads of her workshop gloves in appraisal.  Her educated guesses about the form and function of these parts is finally paying off - she counts herself lucky though. The damage was extensive; it would take nothing short of every creative exploitation of Bulma’s incredible brains and resources to reverse-engineer the port hinge, let alone the whole pod.  Oh yeah, she’s a genius. She bites her cheek. And she can’t share any of this with her circles in the scientific community. How the world ended up in the hands of her muscle-headed friends rather than the minds frontlining science will forever be beyond her. Well, when it comes to space and tech, she supposes she  _ is _ the frontline as of breaking down this - she’s calling it an attack pod.  Goku’s attack pod.    
  
The ship he - purportedly, because she doubts the second-hand word of a hostile alien - was sent to glass Earth in.  She thinks it’s appropriate, that her hands as an Earthling would turn it into the blueprints of Goku’s lifeline. She scoffs.  No one can possibly thank her extensively enough for her engenuity. Goku better kiss her ankle boots next she sees him. That’s right, she isn’t going to confront super-powered aliens without heels that snap hard enough to shatter glass - she’s already got a friend at SAB working on something bespoke for her.   Maybe she should hit Turbo for the suit.    
  
Not to get ahead of herself.  There's still a lot between her and space - even without counting particles.    
  
So Bulma finishes curling her lip at all the praise she deserves but won’t receive and tosses the gutted hunk of metal over her shoulder where the rest of the scrap she plans to repurpose goes to rot.  She marches from her disassembly station and lays out the circuit board. Speaking of scrap, she snags a ribbon cable from the rig she built to interface with the alien circuitry and slots it to a promising looking port.  The Earthmake monitor lights up obligingly with whatever it gleans from the processors with more alien symbols, and she pats herself on the back for only occasionally referencing the heavy stack of translation notes she wrote up.  Seems she’s got a hold of the ship’s brain for air conditioning. Lovely.    
  
Upon closer inspection, it may be a quite sophisticated atmosphere stabilizer.  Monitors unique alien biology to pump chemicals into the air for mostly medical use, as well as provide compatible and comfortable breathable air.  The possible applications of this tech unwind like fraying fabric before her, and she decides in exchange for not revolutionizing modern medicine, among the rest, she will buy herself very good ice cream later.     
  
She skims the code for the gist, and writes out her shorthand.  She’s back to poking around the pod hardware when her music cuts off to chime her ringtone.   
  
“Dismiss!” She shouts.     
  
“Yes, young Ms. Briefs,” she wonders quickly if her dad’s AI is intentionally pointing out the tragedy of her love life or if she’s sensitive.  Doesn’t matter. She wants a hunk.    
  
“You have an incoming video call from the promenade, Ms. Briefs.”   
  
Speak of the devil, and he shall bother you about his garden.     
  
“Go ahead and pick up,” she says sourly.  The uplink tinkles merrily and Bulma straightens from her digging, pushing her hands against her hips and flipping the hem of her lab coat over her cocked knee.  The feed projected in front of her opens to the loading screen, but she doesn’t wait for their taxed bandwidth to get that far before sniping.    
  
“I’m a little busy right now, dad, so it better not be about your dinosaurs.”    
  
The feed clears to Son Chichi’s irate face.  Her father is nowhere to be found.    
  
“Oh interesting, what’s got you so busy that you can’t talk to me for a month, huh?”  Chichi’s eye’s skirt Bulma’s tech littered background and she knows she’s fucked.    
  
“Uh, Chichi!  Hi~, oh my gosh, you are glowing-”   
  
“What are you working on over here?” Chichi snarls, and the heiress jumps.    
  
“Oh you know, Capsule Corp. projects.  I may have all the money I need but I’ve gotta finish a couple patents every once in a while or my shareholders will pitch a fit.”  Actually she doesn’t, her father just likes when she contributes a project every once in a while.    
  
“If you don’t tell me what’s going on,” Chichi begins, dark brown eyes sharp and dangerous in a way Bulma never imagined from the gentle girl and doting bride she knew.  At least, before Goku fell off the face of the planet.   
  
“Wait wait wait -” Nope, nuh uh she’s not dying because everyone else asked her to hush up. “Just, follow one of the garden drones.  It’ll take you to my lab. I’ll tell you what  _ I’m doing _ only if you promise you won’t freak out.  Deal?” She pushes her hands into her pockets, calling on that angry demon that steels her though bad dates and board meetings.  She’s still quivering in her boots.    
  
Chichi puts away the evil eye and nods solemnly, before the feed cuts and Bulma’s fate is sealed.    
  
Damn, she should have posted photos of her clubbing or something.  Or on vacation. Anything that would make her look like she wasn’t buried in a personal project.  For the past four weeks Chichi has been harassing the Z Warriors for anything and everything: Goku’s habits, his history, what they planned to do about his disappearance.  She certainly reached out to Bulma, but it was through normal, not show-up-unannounced-in-your-home type channels. Looks like she was tired of their antics, because she’s finally made her way here.  And after how hard it was to retrieve the attack pod from Paozu without Chichi noticing - tragic.    
  
The door to her lab swings open and Bulma turns, exhausted - maybe a tad guilty, but she has reclaimed her indignance at the sudden nature of the visit.  Chichi thanks the drone very pointedly and stomps inside, before stopping just in the door. She scopes the contents of Bulma’s lab without turning her head as though taking stock of a battlefield.  The scientist doesn’t doubt that she is.    
  
Chichi drops two massive duffel bags onto the floor and crosses her arms.   
  
“Uh,” Bulma says, rather elegantly.   
  
“I’ve finished training, I’m coming with you,” Chichi says.    
  
“Come again?  Hold on, why did you break into my house?” Bulma says, ruffled.    
  
“Your father let me in when I asked politely.  Now, after the tournament Goku taught me a bit about ki, and I’m done perfecting my techniques on Krillin, so you’ve got a decent bodyguard for when you go to space.”    
  
Oh.  That’s why she didn’t come knocking sooner.  Bulma briefly feels pity for Krillin before a spark of the frustration that’s needled her since she started this process rears its head.   
  
“No- ugh,” Bulma tilts her head back in exasperation, looks back to Chichi. “Look, yea, I took Goku’s old spaceship and I’m looking at it, but honestly I don’t know if what I’ve made is actually viable for space travel - and we have no clue where to start looking for him.  I tried everything, checking satellite feeds, the Earth Defence force archive - I hijacked the attack pod’s systems but the nav was wiped. They hardly left a footprint when they landed here and I can’t tell where they’ve gone.”   
  
“Then we’ll just go out and look for leads.” Chichi says it like it’s simple; as though space is not vast, and they will stumble upon someone friendly enough to give a lead.  Or that won’t just kill them.    
  
“We can’t just go out to space without a plan!” Bulma snaps.    
  
“Did you try sending a message to them?” Chichi asks with that vague trepidation of someone who realizes they don’t know exactly what to ask halfway through trying it.    
  
“Oh yeah, and alert the whole galaxy -  including those warrior Saiyans - that we’re here?  I don’t think so. Not unless I know I’m gonna get a hit.  Here,” Bulma walks over to what’s left of the eviscerated pod and smacks a significantly jury rigged console.  “These babies only have rudimentary communications systems - for like, emergencies. I bet their actual communication devices were those eye-glasses you saw them wearing.  We can manage a dialogue but it’d be an open broadcast - I can’t encrypt it from this side.”

  
“So you’re just waiting for someone to contact us, and hoping they’ll be nice enough to give you a lead?” Chichi interjects.  She still seems mad but she’s following that they’re on to something.    
  
“HA, as if.  I’m a genius, remember?” Bulma winks at her, and hops into what’s left of the seat mounting, to heft a non-alien wire fringed receiver. “This baby will track the location of anyone calling us, so if we find something useful, like a station or a habitable planet, whether the caller wants to give us info or not we can pinpoint them.” Bulma beams at her own brilliance.   
  
“So we’re waiting on someone to contact us?” Chichi clarifies pointedly.    
  
Bulma wilts.  “M-more or less…”   
  
Chichi nods her understanding and swallows.  She casts her eyes to the floor. “How likely is it that we’ll get that far?”   
  
“There are lots of signals, this is pretty advanced equipment,” Bulma says. “Most of it is just… junk.  I don’t have the processing power to filter…”   
  
Chichi’s shoulders quiver, and collapse to her chest.  Bulma stands uncertainly until she hears Chichi’s breath hitch, then rushes over and pulls her into a gripping hug.  She smooths her hair, words caught in her throat while Chichi clings to her, trying to bring her racing heart and breathing under control.   
  
“I’m sorry, Chichi.  It was so sudden.”   
  
“I just thought - I’m so tired of waiting for him, right?” Chichi pulls back, eyes swimming with bottled grief, “You’re so smart Bulma, and you’re his oldest friend.  I knew you’d be trying to look for him - you’re always going off on adventures together. This time I want to be the one that helps, so I trained so that you would bring me along too - because if anyone could get me to him, then it’s you,” Chichi’s voice breaks, and Bulma grips her forearms.    
  
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you so soon - the ship’s almost done and I haven’t given up but there’s a very real possibility that Son may be... “    
  
Chichi’s head drops, and her head shakes that she won’t hear it. “He’s out there - he’s well, I’m worried-” She makes eye contact with Bulma, the dam broken, and face streaked, “he’s so free of heart.  I’m worried he’ll never find his way back.”   
  
The unvoiced fear of all his friends, in the absence of dragon balls to wish him back with and an enemy to guard Earth from, washes over Bulma like ice.  It was simple, they all knew him - they knew he cherished them, but his attachments to Earth were fleeting. Gohan, Roshi, Chichi, and Kami - they all saw something precious in him, and worked to tie him down - with family, training, marriage, kids.    
  
Godhood.  __  
__  
Chichi must be scared that even as his wife, she may not be a strong enough anchor to bring him back to Earth.    
  
Bulma hugs her again, because she doesn’t know if she wants Chichi to see her mourn her oldest friend, but it’ll be okay they feel each other cry about it.  Bulma has been working on this almost entirely alone for weeks, with little hope or a sympathetic ear to share this pain with.    
  
She wants to take Chichi to space.   
  
Static pops behind them.  Bulma whips around toward the console, buzzing with a direct transmission.    
  
They rush over, Bulma undocks a mic from somewhere in the mess and hits the push-to-talk button on the receiver.  “Hello? Could you repeat that message? Over.” She cringes at the radio habit but it doesn’t stave her excitement,she sniffs and pushes her hair from her face.    
  
“This is Bardock from S32, neutral craft.  I’m the guy that took Kakarot.”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More soon! Oh, and I gave the last chapter some tweaking, but it's mostly the same. I'm gonna try not to go back and edit in the future so I don't get caught in a creative loop.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't know... half a gosh darned thing about building shit. This is mumbo jumbo, glue, and a couple google searches.


	6. Hyper Threat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've had... a WEEK... and collateral included my laptop but I fuckiinn did it >: )) By the way - I wasn't expecting an inch of interaction from you all, and your comments have been sooo fun! Keep talking keep theorizing PLEASE! Writing this with y'all has been such a joy and I'm tripping on all these ideas - for OI and other stuff I want to write besides. Watch out

Vegeta and his entourage arrive at the spacious hangar early to load provisions, top off fuel tanks, double-check their systems with station control, and most importantly: sanitize their ship.  A mid-sized carrier it may be, but any space exposed to Saiyans for very long tends to get messy quickly - almost overwhelmingly from their eating habits. Vegeta wonders, with the stale air displaced by groaning metal behemoths whipping through his hair, how long he'll last until he bans food from anywhere but the compact dining kitchen.  Then again he enjoys eating privately about half the time, and is remiss to lose the luxury. A klaxon blares distantly to signal airlock procedures, and a gargantuan junker drifts out into space from the far end of the dock. He appreciates his own light drowsiness at the early hour and the regular droning roar of a nearly abandoned hangar.  Only the runways and the few active docking stations are lit - theirs bustles singularly in his own discipline. Saiyan upper class cadres may consider him impulsive, but he holds strict standards for himself and his crew. One doesn't launch for deep space at the drop of a hat without practiced prep and a good crew.

 

Chicor returns bearing caffeinated refreshments, and Vegeta calls for a meeting to attend that once the bulk of the load has been stocked.  His technical team is relatively small, 14 in total and - rather unusually - comprised mostly of Saiyan talent. They're a strange outfit and they're quite aware.  Despite the Saiyans' explosive contributions to innovative science these last two decades their reputation as technological illiterates has been difficult to shake.  Vegeta sees his raucous and intensely loyal team for the bullheaded experts they are - not to mention that Saiyan teams boast the warmest camaraderie of any Vegeta has witnessed, with the convenient reduced risk of spies.

 

His navigation unit reports their route for Vegetasei logged; his engineers merrily reminisce patching their old ship long past its expiration date - get to the point quickly and mention the much less life threatening fine instrument tuning they're working on.  Everything necessary for take-off just needs to be double-checked with station control, and they can be on their way. Vegeta tells them if they finish loading prep in the next twenty minutes they'll open enough time to go to the station buffet for breakfast and he gets a resounding cheer.  Vegeta dismisses them, Nappa arrives from compiling reports and barks orders over Vegeta's shoulder.

 

The game starts, Nappa yells scathing insults and each shout gets a creatively explicit rebuttal from the team while they work.  Even the non-Saiyans, gruff and hard as they would have to be to work with the lot, chime in and inspired choices of words are met with celebratory hollering and laughter.  The heckling lifts Vegeta's mood, and he smirks his appreciation that he works primarily with his own once more. Any dock workers wandering by give them a wide berth, to his amusement.  Raucous as they are, they finish in fifteen and line up at attention before the ship, silent with their hands clasped behind their backs. Vegeta congratulates them, dismisses them, and they ease into a sharp-toothed procession of hungry animals.  Then they list away from their destination, slow to a stop. Curiosity piqued, Vegeta walks over to what appears to be something of a stand-off, leaving the ship to Nappa.

 

It's Raditz.  He's dogged, clearly out of bed before he planned and unhappily accosted by upper elites.  Shalla steps in as head of the pack, her significant stature brings her eye-to-eye with the second-class before she looks over her shoulder to Vegeta, mirth in her eyes and he nods.  Raditz says something and Chicor steps forward curiously, glancing around Raditz until he gestures at - something. Kakarot steps into view - wearing a dark navy thermal shirt common out in space, but in garish bright loose pants and soft boots.  Chicor babbles surprise just as Vegeta reaches earshot, the din of the chamber and high ceiling acoustics forcing the group in close to hear each other.

 

At the sight of him approaching Kakarot tucks his chin slightly down and his mouth pulls tight.  He seems alert despite the hour, sans crutches and much more… generally well than Vegeta last saw him.  He's still oddly pale, but he flushes healthy colors and his posture, tailbone tucked under and hips turned out to stand with his heels shoulder-width apart, draws attention to his sturdy breadth now that he stands on his own.  He flows, Vegeta notices, and it makes him almost svelte next to the hard, domineering presence of his kind. Vegeta supposes that on a peaceful planet, that may have been the point.

 

"Prince Vegeta, this guy looks just like Bardock, yeah?" Shalla says.  Vegeta nods confirmation and the group turns back to Kakarot with renewed curiosity.

 

"Raditz, you're early.  What's your business here?" Vegeta isn't mad - yet.  He doesn't want to deal with these crabby fucks if they don't have enough time to eat because they got curious.

 

Shalla looks back at him as though biting her tongue on something particularly amusing, and Raditz sighs. "Nothing, this guy harassed me into bringing him here.  Wants away from Bardock for some reason."

 

"Bardock is here!?" Chicor asks, and the whole group peals with excited murmuring.

 

Raditz grimaces, and Kakarot jumps, alarmed.  "Is he? I wasn't paying attention!" He looks away, toward the ship interior, his shoulders drop.  "Nah he's far away."

 

Shalla steps forward and leans down to his height.   "Saiyans aren't a common sight out in the wilds. What's your name, and what are ya doing here with a guy like him?"  She gestures past his head to Raditz, who sours more at the vague derision, but gives Kakarot a _look._

 

Kakarot frowns, then curiously introduces himself with his Saiyan name. "He picked me up.  Says he's my brother."

 

"No way, but Bardock told everyone his youngest failed to survive!" Someone shouts surprise from the ensemble - even the few non-Saiyans know his name.

 

"That was before Frieza declared war.  Looks like he was planning ahead longer than any of us knew."  Vegeta speculates aloud, and Shalla nods, visibly caught off guard.  Several hands reach up to thumb their couriers for a power reading.

 

Kakarot scratches the back of his neck, his eyebrows drift together.  Raditz pipes up, "He was a frail baby, they said if he lived he would have a bad heart.  Even I believed it when Bardock said he died."

 

"Will ya' not talk over me?" Kakarot gripes.

 

"Sure," Raditz says unconvincingly.

 

Someone from the back laughs and informs the crowd that his power barely pushes 300, and the whole procession rips with mixed astonishment and pity.  Shalla straightens with a sigh, eyeing Kakarot with measured disappointment. "Doesn't seem smart either, looks like nothing useful is going to come of Bardock's ilk.  Shame."

 

Vegeta chuckles - he knew from the report Bardock shared but it's still hilarious.

 

"Idunno about useful, but I ain't trained with anyone like you yet." Kakarot's response silences the lot.  Chicor whistles, Shalla smirks.

 

"You haven't been around other Saiyans much, you mean?"  The unspoken implication, that he lacks the conditioning to respect his betters, and that he as a weak adult Saiyan shows little promise as a member of their race rings heavy.  Raditz grinds his teeth behind him, mad but unwilling to challenge them.

 

"No," Kakarot sizes many of them up, settles on Shalla and puts his good foot forward, balls is quivering fists, "but pretty soon I'll be able to take 'ya."

 

Vegeta notices with some amusement that Raditz's pallor nearly matches his brother's.

 

Shalla laughs first, loud and proud and the rest of the crew join in.  Chicor claps Kakarot's shoulder hard and he takes the blow, surprised. "We've got breakfast to eat, but - haha, looks like you've got more guts than Raditz at least.  Not so bad for a third-class. Let's go!" He shouts and waves a hand for the rest to follow. The loud team splits around Kakarot as a river would a stone, tagging him with rough hands against his chest and shoulders, and the occasional hand ruffling his hair.

 

Kakarot looks after them as they leave, winded and a bit mussed but Vegeta can see the adrenaline deepening the darks of his eyes even from this angle.  It reminds the prince of how he looked under him - which immediately annoys the fuck out of Vegeta. Kakarot turns back to Vegeta before he decides to do anything about it.

 

"So how long 'til we can leave?"

 

"What." The fuck, really, because shouldn't Kakarot want to stay with his sire?

 

"Bardock had to teach him about… stuff… and I don't think it went so well..." Raditz says, and he looks equal parts embarrassed and sick.  

 

"Which would be?" If he won't get a straight answer from either of them he decides he'll punch Kakarot again.

 

"Oh, no that went fine.  Bardock explained Saiyan breeding to me - I guess I kinda get it.  Better than how I learned on Earth, anyways." Kakarot crosses his arms, noncommittal, and Vegeta tries not to be impressed that he's not completely immature.  Raditz however turns away red faced, outing himself as _that_ kind of squeamish prude.  Ha.

 

 _And, speak of the devil._ Vegeta spies the Saiyan himself walking over quickly, uncapping some kind of plunger with his teeth.  They make eye contact. Vegeta senses that this could be good, looks away as though he didn't see a thing.

 

"Then what did you drag me out of bed over!?" Raditz snaps impatiently, one hand splayed to cover his warm face.

 

"Oh, he keeps stickin' me with needles!  He got me when I was half awake, that jerk!  He said he needed to give me more so I ran -"

 

Kakarot's eyes widen, as though preternaturally aware of soom looming threat.  Bardock's narrow. He picks up the pace, breaking into a sprint just as Kakarot dives to Raditz for cover.

 

"Help!" He _wails,_ and Vegeta is instantly insulted that Kakarot never bothered to be so scared of him.  That insult is the impetus that locks his arm around the simpleton's neck, dragging them both to their knees where he can turn Kakarot to meet his maker.  Ha.

 

He shrieks betrayal in Vegeta's hold, just as a proximity alert sparks across his visor; a spiked power reading materializing right on top of him.  It surprises him enough that the bastard he's holding nearly squirrels out of his grip but Vegeta renews his hold, works them until they're both sat with the third-class's back to his chest.  He watches the numbers rocket upward until they slow near 500. Somehow, unbelievably, the reticle display is locked on Kakarot. Vegeta shakes him like a cat - and he might as well be, the way he's clawing - until the dizziness forces his struggle to subside.  Bardock gets close enough to shout.

 

"Raditz, hold his legs!"  Raditz breaks from his shock to comply, pushing his brother's boots flat to the industrial flooring by his ankles.  The flailing returns with a vengeance, however impeded Kakarot's limbs may be, but it's reduced to scrabbling arms and aborted jerks of his knees.  Which would be fine if it wasn't for the screaming. Bardock arrives, a castoff glint of the needle he brandishes does something decidedly amusing to the pitch of Kakarot's voice.  Some dock workers wander closer to see what's making the awful racket and Vegeta scatters them, snarling pure venom. Like hell he'll be seen holding down another Saiyan for a shot.  Kakarot's terror is amusing but Vegeta decides he prefers his appearances over the entertainment.

 

"Kakarot if you don't shut _the fuck_ up you will spend the rest of you pathetic life eating through your bloodstream," Kakarot's mouth snaps shut; however, that white edged look in his eye suggests his silence won't last so long, so Vegeta moves one hand to cover them.  Kakarot freezes, not breathing, and vegeta thinks he may not blink; it's difficult to tell under his gloves. Bardock kneels beside him, grabs his arm and forces him to extend it to the ground by the sole of his shoe, and Kakarot chokes, then tries once again to scrabble away.  At least he's not making noise, but he's baring his teeth dangerously, so Vegeta pulls his head firmly back by his grip on his face and slings his arm around Kakarot's waist, completely sealing his last free limb to his side and arresting his fidgeting.

 

Vegeta also twists his fingers into the soft skin of his flank in the mother of all pinches, just as Bardock sticks him.  He holds him there, expecting another unbelievable tirade of wailing but

 

"Ow OW, what the-" It's lucid, and he doesn't pull hard from the point of hurt.  So he doesn't have a completely pathetic pain tolerance. Bardock pockets the needle, then applies a fibrous patch to his young's inner elbow and Kakarot's arm snaps up reflexively to help stop the bleeding. Vegeta releases Kakarot by kicking him away.  Kakarot turns, face thunderous and a bit hurt to give him the whatfor, Vegeta assumes, but he doesn't get much farther than an indignant syllable.

 

Because Bardock sticks another needle into Kakarot's shoulder while he's distracted.  Kakarot turns, sees the needle, and nearly passes out on Vegeta's lap. Nearly because Vegeta stands fast enough to avoid having to touch him again, and Raditz catches his scruff before his head can bounce off the floor.  Shame, the characters engraved on the ground can be read as a pun for "waste", and would have been appropriate stamped to the young Saiyan's head.

 

"I'm done, you can relax," Bardock says, more or less as unflapped as Vegeta last saw him.

 

Kakarot takes a moment to catch his breath, then responds, weak. " Thanks…"

 

"You should know that you're going to be getting a shot once a day for a couple weeks, though." Bardock speaks noncommittal, concentrating instead on separating the used needles so he can dispose of them properly.  

 

Bardock's impeccable timing means that Kakarot nearly falls over again the moment he regains his feet.  Vegeta does laugh openly this time.

 

"And you need someone to give them to him.  You can trust that he will receive proper medical care with me and my crew," he says, smiling to the now miffed Saiyan.  Kakarot folds his hands together behind his head and ignores the lot of them, the conspirators. Raditz tries to gesture apologetically and Kakarot simply turns away.

 

"As long as he's healthy when I get back to Vegetasei," Bardock says, distractedly digging through his kitbag.

 

"You have my word," the moment the half-chuckled phrase leaves Vegeta's mouth his stomach drops, and unease washes the amusement from him.  

 

"Neat." Bardock produces a liquid prescription capsule with dosages stamped around the side.  "It was a pain in the ass to get him with one arm."

 

Vegeta takes the proffered cap, pensive.

 

"That's good for the first half of his treatment.  Load it into your medbay when you're out and the system will replenish it.  Nothing too fancy." Bardock slings his kit over his shoulder, and fucks off.

 

"Seeya."

 

"Hey!" Kakarot voices Vegeta's thought for him, but he quickly realizes they may have different ideas.  Bardock stops to show he's listening. "Next time I see you I'm gonna kick your butt for that shot."

 

"What about the rest?" Bardock asks.  Whether he's talking about the other needles or displacing his son is unclear.

 

"Eh, I wasn't ready for the other ones.  You got me fair and square this time, so I'll pay you back." Bardock turns only far enough that he can share a wolfish grin with his youngest, then he's gone.

 

"Raditz."  Said Saiyan turns, reluctant.

 

"I'll have plenty of time to ask you about it, so you might as well tell me now.  Did your father intend this?" Vegeta's eyes are locked onto the tiny pod rolling in his palm.  

 

"What… specifically, Prince Vegeta?" he asks.

 

Vegeta's eyes snap to his, and he looks away, as though it burns.  Sometimes the trouble with lower classes is they're so squirrely you can't tell whether they have something to hide or they're just scared.  

 

Vegeta considers, staring Raditz down, how he - the Prince, now bears sole responsibility for the safety of the son of the only threat to the traditional Saiyan social hierarchy.  Indefinitely. Bardock may have the respect of many, but he's still hailed as something of a symbol by the lower classes, even if some have turned away from him for partnering with a royal institution for research instead of taking up the torch of rebellion.  His work speaks for himself, so he has fans even in the upper echelons but.

 

But.

 

That all just makes him more of a crafty bastard, doesn't it?  He's strong and he clearly gives an Arlian's ass about Raditz, so no one, enemies, allies, can ever get any leverage on him.  

 

And then he gets a new son, who he reaches across galaxies to find under the pursuit of The Cold Empire and his own kind, and manages to secure his safety.

 

With potentially the person with greatest use for that kind of leverage.  

 

Vegeta thinks he's going to grind his teeth to powder if he continues to consider the possibility so he turns to Kakarot, who is invigorated by the attention.

 

"And where were you planning to stay until we leave?"

 

"Idunno, with you?  Do you know any good places to exercise? I'm feeling pretty stiff," he says, pulling an elbow to his shoulder and twisting at the waist.

 

"Don't bother, we won't be seeing action any time soon," Vegeta says, because this oaf has been blowing hot air about getting strong but the greatest opportunities for advancement for Saiyans is battle.  

 

"Well I'd like to spar, but I should make sure I'm conditioned again before I do.  Besides, I never feel right'f I don't do somethin' in the morning." He locks his fingers together behind his back and pulls his locked elbows as high as possible - weird-looking far, turns out - then looses those hands to press against the small of his back as he tilts backwards.  Vegeta looks away.

 

"What, you find enjoyment in toil? I didn't peg you as the type." Vegeta smirks at his own joke, if only to cover the way his blood _boils._  Kakarot doesn't see the black ice he's sprinting toward full throttle and Vegeta, vindicated, decides that anyone with so little talent has to be taking the piss out of him if they so much as suggest they feel the urgency to make those small and fundamental gains the way he lives for them.

 

Lived.  Lately a war and his uncontested prowess have put his personal training on the backburner.  The longer his subjects would ply, and ingratiate that his efforts were ultimately fruitless at his strength, the less appealing making time away from his duties seemed.

 

If he had to suffer that nonsense then he'll sure as shit teach Kakarot not to mock him.  

 

And the ice is incredibly thin.

 

"I love it. I made all my friends through fightin', and nothing beats the rush.  Well, I guess training got to be fun too." The source of his voice drops toward the floor and Vegeta looks to Kakarot dropped into a half squat with a leg fully extended.  He interupts a bounce on his hamstring to blind the prince with the neat fit of his molars.

 

The ice holds, shivers, pitches, and maybe cracks but Vegeta still simmers.

 

"If you make a nuisance of yourself I'll break your legs."  Kakarot pauses from reversing his stretch and his mouth quirks into something like a frown, but before he can speak whatever shit that comes to mind Raditz hauls him to his feet by his collar.

 

"I'll find you somewhere to train just shut the hell up," he hisses, and Kakarot grabs the hand on his shoulder.  Vegeta can see the throw crossing the Earth Saiyan's mind before he even tries, and Raditz is pathetic enough that it may work on him - which would be hilarious, but an idea comes to mind.

 

"Why bother when we've a perfectly suitable facility here?"  They both balk, he turns away quickly in hopes Kakarot will take the bait.

 

"Wait, the ship?  He won't-" Kakarot sprints until he's nearly on top of Vegeta's heels, then slows to a trot beside Vegeta.

 

"Oh!  what've you got?"  At least it won't be difficult for Vegeta to get his kicks out of this guy.

 

"Kakarot wait a second!" Raditz sounds desperate.

 

"Shut the fuck up second-class."

 

Raditz complies.

 

"What kind of space stuff do 'ya train with?" Vegeta swears this son of a bitch bounces.

 

"Gravity."  Kakarot looks surprised, but more at the mention than the idea.  Their feet stamp up the tinny ramp and Kakarot's eyes wander around where the hull has pulled away from the otherwise sleek radial ship.

 

"No way," he says, and Vegeta congratulates him for his insight by fisting the front of Kakarot's shirt and _hauling_ him into the ship.  

 

Raditz's surprised shout is cut off, and Kakarot is too busy keeping his feet to do much more than yelp.  Vegeta thunders through the long hallways just faster than he knows the younger Saiyan can run and they pass a startled Nappa along the way.   Vegeta stops in front of an alcove and his courier flickers before the wall irises open in front of him and he tosses Kakarot in.

 

"WA-" he rolls nimbly, then Vegeta jams the wall just of sight and a semi translucent barrier slams down between them.  Kakarot lunges forward to slam a fist against the barrier, just over Vegetas face but it holds.

 

He doesn't even flinch.

 

He does laugh when Kakarot looks around, confused.

 

"This is an isolation chamber.  You fuck around and this is where you'll stay.  We've got an ethical code not to make these spaces very small, so it should be adequate for your 'exercise'." Kakarot blinks.

 

Vegeta calls Nappa, and ignores his requests for an explanation.  "Turn on the ship's artificial gravity."

 

"Uh - of course, Vegeta."  The call drops, Vegeta turns the control dial on the room's dedicated control board up up up…

 

Kakarot returns from looking about the - really, maybe 9 square meter oblong room to look at him, tense and expectant with both hands pressed to the glass.  He says something, and Vegeta finds he prefers Kakarot when he can't hear him.

 

"You can thank your father for this.  Artificial gravity keeps getting better and better, but he helped engineer the technology that lets me do this to you."

 

When that comfortable pressure ease onto Vegeta's shoulders, Kakarot's knees slam to the floor.

 

And that is funny, so Vegeta gloats, "The gravity is higher on Vegetasei than most habitable planets, so for me this is quite cozy.  I think I'll let you adjust to something more weighty - you seem up for the challenge." He throws his head back and laughs. The gravity stabilizes around roughly one and half times the gravity of Vegetasei, and Kakarot is flat on the floor, still trying not to drop from his elbows.

 

Yup, priceless.  Kakarot has turn his head to look up at him, and says something else, teeth clenched.

 

"I think I'll leave you here until your next shot, what do you think?" He laughs again.  "Guess we'll see. It was such a pleasure meeting you Kakarot, I hope we'll have much to talk about during our time together." Vegeta waves off the third class and takes a step away, intent on retrieving his team.  Raditz turns the corner, breath short under the heavy gravity and searching until he spots Vegeta. They make eye contact and both their courier's spike. Raditz looks past Vegeta into the isolation chamber, face blanched, and Vegeta whips back around.

 

Kakarot has backed away from his door, and is settled in a low squat despite the strain on his legs and he pulls his gathered hands under himself.  He says something, quick and pushes his hands out toward the porthole.

 

The hallways burns blindingly bright from an attack stronger than Kakarot's power level.  Vegeta shields his eyes, blinks away the burning blue to see the low class with his arms crossed over his face protectively, thermal sleeves singed away and arms bloody but intact.  He's heaving, falls onto his ass but catches himself before he's flat on his back with his hands behind him and flips his head back to open up his airway, drags gasping breaths. Vegeta growls.  

 

"This is a containment unit, genius.  Any attacks will be reflected back to you. Raditz!" The buffoon rushes over.  "Watch him, I've got a feed on but if his power level keeps fluctuating I want to know.  Either the couriers are bugging out or this guy can somewhat control his power level." Raditz gulps, salutes.

 

"Yes, sir!"

 

Vegeta grunts.

 

\----

 

Goku groans.  His scuffed arms quiver under him, straining until they straighten into another completed pushup.

 

 _Just one more, just one more…_ Goku plays the mantra like a prayer.

 

 _'Goku.'_ Oh! do prayers really reach Gods? Goku's knees drop and he sits back on his heels to catch his breath.

 

 _'Huh?  Sure. Think a little quieter when I'm trying to talk you.'_ King Kai gripes.

 

 _'Sorry sorry,'_ Goku replies, chuckling.

 

' _That Vegeta guy sure is a character, but honestly he did you a favor.  This is better than perfect conditions to train.'_ Goku drags his forehead against his upper sleeve, trying to reduce the itch of sweat.  

 

 _'Yeah, I didn't think he'd give us what you wanted so easy.  Lucky he doesn't like me, right?'_ Goku exhales a quick laugh, then looks out toward the port door.  Vegeta left a while a go now, not more than an hour, and he can see Raditz's hair and shoulder from where he sits against the wall, back to Goku.  A couple of Vegeta's crew members have walked by and seen him, but now it seems a small group have come to look at the spectacle. Maybe. It feels a little like the energy of the crowd at the Tenkaichi Budokai preliminaries when he was really small, when the other fighters' laughs were sharp.  They called him cute a lot. Goku ignores their soundless chattering in the window. He could hear Vegeta before somehow but now the room is silent.

 

 _'You should work on calisthenics or practice forms for now - just get used to moving.  Nothing fancy.'_ King Kai says.

 

 _'Yeah, I can stand and walk at least, it's just kinda hard.'_  Goku pulls himself to his feet, nods to himself and settles into a sedate series of kata.  ' _King Kai, what's calthenics?'_

 

 _'Exercises that help you move better.'_ King Kai doesn't seem impatient, so he must be getting used to Goku.

 

 _'Oh.  Thanks, I've heard that word but I didn't know it.'_  Goku concentrates on flowing through his forms slow and precise, counting his breaths even.  It's hard as hell, and he's sweating bullets but he's beginning to adjust to the heavy gravity.  He's really gonna feel this in a couple of days.

 

Movement catches his eye and he breaks concentration to look over and see a couple other Saiyans laughing, a few copying some of his movements.  He straightens, faces them and pushes his hands together in a bow.

 

The guy from before is there, Goku doesn't see the tall lady among the four Saiyans.  They talk to each other a bit, before the person Goku recognizes copies Goku's bow, too.  Goku smiles.

 

Soon they're all copying Goku's forms, quick on the uptake as strong as they are but clearly not practiced in these movements.  They bump elbows a bit and shove good-naturedly in the hallway. He can tell he's moving too slow for them, but he doesn't push his pace and he can see them break away every once in a while to improvise something like… choreography? There are punches and kicks and they stomp quite a bit with the visible shouting, it reminds him a bit of a haka he once saw performed by a famous sports team before a tournament.  

 

Oh, do they think he's doin' a dance?

 

Goku thinks that's kind of a fun assumption.  It probably doesn't look so different to them.  He continues unperturbed, and thinks back to his time training on the beach as a kid.  He imagines it might feel like this to practice on the bottom of the ocean.

 

Goku settles on that image, wraps up his kata.  Somehow, the way he can see the Saiyans outside moving with him sparks something in his blood, and his limbs seem a little less heavy.  

 

Goku bounces, feels his own weight, then pushes higher from the balls of his feet and skates a drop into a low cat stance.   _'King Kai, I think I'm gonna shadow box.'_

 

_'That might be a bit much for you right now.'_

 

_'Yeah, but I can feel my muscles really well like this.'_

 

 _'Geez fine, warm up however you want.'_ Now King Kai does sound annoyed.

 

 _'It's kinda chilly in here, actually.'_ Goku hears a feeling sigh.  He tries not to crack a smile, because he understood the turn of phrase just fine.

 

' _No ki attacks, then.  You don't have the stamina.'_

 

_'Sure!'_

 

Goku starts small, imagining someone like Yamcha as his opponent.  Yamcha always had really clean wrists and arms, but he wasn't so great at guarding his midline...  Very showy. Goku dives for Yamcha, aiming to grab his feet out from under him. With this gravity he barely keeps up with the ephemera, and it punches down at his back the moment he comes in close.  He kicks the ground hard, passing over the fist within a hair's breadth and wheeling his legs around mid air to land an axe kick.

 

He doesn't make his mark, because Yamcha has moved aside and is unleashing a lunging chain of powerful punches.  Goku slips around them, but barely, he still isn't comfortable fighting in the air, so he tanks a couple of hits until his boots brush the ground.  

 

Yamcha's follow-through widens as he picks up his pace, but now that Goku can maneuver he's pulling his momentum into circles.  Goku slips so near around him that he has to swing to behind himself. Goku catches his elbow and _pulls_ , and Yamcha flies over his shoulder and crashes face first to the floor.  Tien materializes to land an overhead blow and Goku throws his arms over his face to catch it, but just barely.  He's on his knees with his back to the enemy, and Tien doesn't waste the opportunity, slamming his knee into his side.  Goku tumbles aside around the hit, rolls from his shoulder and springs to his feet, finally facing Tien, who is already far too close.  The wall is close behind him, a smooth rounded surface so he pulls back further, slamming his hands palms up above his shoulders. He jackknifes his knee up _through_ Tien's chin, the follow through of the blow pulling his body over his anchored hands so that his feet land on the ceiling.  Then the acrobatics start. Tien follows him like a mad dog, and Goku has to slip and turn and make full use of every extension of his body he can navigate around Tien's reach in the diminutive space.  He can't wait for Tien to predict his moves, though, so once he's at his side he viciously attacks his balance. Tien faces him now but he's backpedaling, so Goku crashes a tight-knuckled barrage into his chin and sternum until Tien's guard is so loose he can slip inside, punching down, up, around, pulling him by his loosened wrist to

 

Shatter his jaw on his elbow.  Tien ragdolls under him, and Goku releases him to fall completely.  Goku turns around for his favorite competitor, someone with a complimentary style and a hot head to boot.  Krillin snaps his arms and drops into a mirror stance.

 

 _'You're adjusting quickly,'_ King Kai comments, but Goku sniffs.

 

 _'Must be the alien genes, right?'_ Goku overextends the fingers of his leading hand, then cracks them back into a tense curl.  His other fist presses against his floating ribs, and he edges just forward, lowering his center of gravity to match his opponent.   _'Actually I can barely keep up, I think Krillin's gonna get me.'_

 

_'Oh sure, just like that guy over there.'_

 

 _'Huh?'_ Big arms crush down on Goku's shoulders and he nearly jumps out of his skin in surprise.

 

 _'Do you get tunnel vision?'_ King Kai says.

 

"Stop dancing." It's Raditz, face pinched.

 

"How'd you get in?" Goku asks, mystified.

 

"Doors are one-way.  Could you not make a scene, by the way?"

 

"I'm just getting used to moving." Goku looks back to said one-way door, gone he assumes, and so are the crew members.

 

Raditz looks back, realizes what Goku is looking for.  "Your audience left. We're taking off and it's almost meal time."

 

Goku suddenly finds himself amicable to the training interruption.

 

"Vegeta says stop distracting the crew, by the way."

 

"Distracting how?" Goku crosses his arms, then hisses.  Raditz grimaces, grabs them and turns his hands, inspecting the damage.

 

"Yeah guess you wouldn't know.  We save dancing for special occasions, like official fights and mating ceremonies.  It used to be more common, but the short answer is you do that and everyone will get really rowdy." Raditz drops his arms.

 

"But those are the forms I fight with." Raditz considers this, motions for Goku to follow him.  Goku's weight decompresses when they pass through the portway, not all the way, the relief surprises him.

 

"Okay, you're gonna just be doing that.  Well if everyone starts slugging each other Vegeta's gonna chew you out, not me."  Raditz rubs his face to relieve some of the pressure building up in the front of his skull.

 

"Yer comin' with?" Goku asks, excited.  Raditz blinks at his enthusiasm a bit bewildered.

 

"Yeah, my squad's posted at the same fleet Vegeta's planning to stop at before you go back to Vegetasei.  And he's pushing you off on me." Goku brightens while he talks.

 

"Then I can show you how I fight for real!" Goku pumps his bloody arms. Raditz looks away, embarrassed.

 

"What you weren't trying your best on Earth?

 

"Nah, I totally was.  But I've learned a lot since then.  Plus I only got a peek at your style so I couldn't come up with very good counters." Raditz snorts.  

 

"Yeah we'll see."

 

\----

 

"Hello? This is Bardock, do you read?" Bardock wears his personal courier now, leaving his hand free to inspect the latest blood sample he took off of Kakarot. He drops it from the light to plug into his modified BMAC - because he doesn't trust the station not to log his son's genetic footprint.  Some of his colleagues back home call him paranoid, but watch them not practice caution when they run into their clones.

 

Actually those sellouts probably worked on that project.  Whatever, Bardock used old scouters during the trip to tip off any watchful eyes and the gamble paid off, so he thinks his recent paranoid decisions count as batting one hundred.  

 

He almost wishes he didn't.  This all would be much easier if he was able to put the kid down.  He releases the edge of the counter in front of him, belatedly realizing that he's singed it beyond repair.  Overworld and Sadala, he is dumb.

 

The comm crackles back, and he doesn't recognize this voice, but he thinks it's safe to assume he landed a friend of Kakarot's.

 

"Oh yeah I read.  What the hell has you calling after taking Son?" Bingo.

 

"Well, 'friend'-"

 

" **_I'm Bulma Briefs and don't you forget it buster!_ **" Bardock nearly swallows his tongue.

 

"... I have a gift from Kakarot.  I'm calling because he seemed upset."  Bardock, as someone with futuresight, a fierce intellect, and the galaxy's finest restimg bitch face, does not often find himself feeling sheepish.  This woman is overbearing.

 

" _No, he's upset?_  Of course he's upset you KIDNAPPER!" Bardock hears a pause, then her voice, muffled maybe. "Oh let me handle this Chichi, he doesn't deserve to speak to you.  Yeah yeah, I'll tell him. Goku's _wife_ says go fuck yourself."

 

Bardock laughs, shocked, but pleasantly.  "Yeah I'll get to that. Kakarot's so weird I didn't expect his choice in partners to be so Saiyan."  

 

The line pipes with static and some murmuring, he thinks he hears someone shouting. "Condescend to me-- I'll knit him a sweater out of his small intestines!!.... _My_ hubby, _MINE!!..."_

 

Theres rustling and the audio peaks before the line stabilizes.

 

"Chichi," He says, firm.

 

" **What!!** " He likes her.

 

"You and Kakarot tried to have a child."

 

The line stays quiet.

 

"You know he can't don't you?" Bardock doesn't dare to say more, because he thinks he's done this woman enough disrespect.

 

It stays quiet for a few moments until he hears a sound like the receiver passing hands, the Kakarot's mate sounds, clear.

 

"I figured.  I was honestly a little confused.  His friends all said he looked normal growing up because he didn't care much about being naked but… I don't think he had…" She tapers off, and Bardock considers how young she must be.

 

"Kakarot didn't mature until very recently, so he probably wouldn't have seemed very different from your species males until now." He sits back onto a work stool, eyes another sample turning on a plate.

 

"Yeah… this kind of messes up our plans." Chichi sounds downtrodden, and Bardock's bites the inside of his cheek, appraising.  Depending on how she responds…

 

"Is that a problem?" He says, tone measured.

 

"What?" Her surprise carries.

 

"He can't give you children, do you still stand by mating with him?"  He knows most societies aren't like Saiyans, who choose for life - for better or for worse.  So he thumbs his lip and waits, brow furrowed.

 

"Oh, you call it that, huh?  Yes. I wanted kids of our own but there are a lot of children without parents on Earth - maybe out there in stars too.  How are Saiyans about adoption?" She laughs, wet at the end. "I've wanted to be with Goku a long time, I won't have anyone else."

 

"Hn." Bardock looks at the humming kludge-bent machine in front of him. "Then I'll be visiting.  at some point. With a gift." The machine beeps, then the monitor lights up with genetic information.

 

Chichi scoffs.  "What's that supposed to mean?"

 

He frowns. "Wait until I get there?"

 

"OHH, so you think I'm just gonna sit pretty until you and your friends come back to Earth, huh!?"  She has the lung capacity to contend with any Saiyan. The other woman yells, victorious, then cuts onto the line as well.

 

"Didn't think I'd be able to handle your alien gizmos, did you? HA!  I've got a lock on you, _Bardock,_ so expect us soon because we're coming to personally shove your shit in.  Take _my_ best friend, huh?  Well good luck!! Sit tight, because we'll chase you to the ends of the universe, you ass!  Piece of shit, eat a bag of dicks I've GOT you motherfu-"

 

He cuts the connection.

 

Formidable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there are massive errors I'm so sorry lmao
> 
> edit: yeah haka spelling lmao. Remembering to correct this was a very narrow thing (6/14/19)


	7. Day One, Deck Zero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ended up frankensteining snippets of bullshit into A MONSTER of a chapter, that could and should have been cut to a chapter and half (not a good one, tons of rework and here I finally fucking am with a product down to size I guess). Very exciting though, because I'm really getting to lay the groundwork that'll carry us to the conclusion. Expect the next much much sooner, seeing as it's already written. : D
> 
> (unless I decide I want to rewrite it entirely, which. I'm crossing my fingers too. please brain, please spare me.)

Goku flexes his hands under ductile mesh, pulled like a second skin from elbow to knuckles.  When he nestles his wrists in the curve of his elbows the pliant muscles won't give properly; the material firms a hide only to forces acting upon the outside.  Goku thinks it's fancy for a couple burns. A full stomach, and no Raditz to fuss over him, however, put Goku into a bright mood, so he simply rests his unyielding palms on his spread knees, ankles locked together under the seat Raditz strapped him to before scampering off.  If he cranes his neck he can see onto control deck and watch Vegeta, free floating inches off the floor. The ship rumbles a deep drone, powering up and pitching down to near inaudible frequencies but he still feels it - inside of this "atmosphere field" they called it, where there is wind resistance, the mass of the station looming unknowably high to starboard, and other complicated stuff everyone, "Can’t explain right now!”  

 

Maybe not high.  In space, Goku considers, there isn't any one correct orientation.  He would use Earth as his point of reference, but he doesn't know what direction he should look to find it. 

 

Well, learning how Saiyans fly more or less taught him about the inflexibility of fighting on a singular plane.  He supposes in that context space may kind of make sense. Or not - he thinks he could correlate the ideas but the pieces don’t fit so neatly in his head.  He isn't one of these technicians, so he doesn't worry about it.

 

So space flickers - swallows command.  Only the steady blips of courier monitors and utterly dense command interfaces, corner-bent with a few sleek integrated buttons convey impressions of shapes.  Saiyan eyes, and a few no less alien but more unfamiliar, flash into the dark when their faces turn toward Goku except for Vegeta, front-faced and blotting a true-dark silhouette against the starscape.  A path lights, bending away from the ship, and in the dim Goku can't watch mesh map his wrists so his eyes are locked on how the whole ship, massive but small enough to be manned by this small team, drops into the holo-lit runway.  The ship shakes violently, not entirely aerodynamic, and Goku's inner ear wrenches his maybe dangerously full stomach when they list a roll into endless space. The shaking isn't helping - he  _ knew  _ he saw people snickering at him and Raditz when they ate lunch; he would have liked a warning.

 

Goku breathes in his nose, out his mouth, looks back up when the  violence of atmosphere rises to a fever pitch and falls away with the last of their guidelights.  The ship settles with a sigh, and power directed to engines equalizes, bleeding lowlights onto the deck.  The crew fires off reports to Vegeta, someone overheads from engine deck to confirm - something about pressure with the angle of exit.  Goku can only grab bits with these acoustics. He supposes they've made it to the travel part of space travel alright.

 

Nappa materializes from the border of Goku's line of sight to tell Vegeta something, gestures at a sleek interactive pad not unlike the one Bardock carried.  Vegeta nods, and then they're walking over.

 

They look directly at Goku, so he imagines there's little hope that they'll pass him ignored.  His knee-jerk reaction tells him that messing with that kind of power won't end well; he shouldn’t provoke them with something so brazen as returning the gesture, but upon further inspection he thinks the idea is silly.  Vegeta only needs to walk a few paces to reach him, and Goku takes the opportunity to look because - he never could explain it. If he had to say, maybe, he'd tell someone that he sees people better when they're in motion.  For example Vegeta's gloves, with fingers half-curled swinging as measured as his strides, imply the shape of the skin-deep tendons in the lowlight. He's slightly bow-legged, but Goku can tell that he strengthened rather than weakened his joints with appropriate training.  Rather than bely a flaw, his unique silhouette further abstracts him from the absolutely massive Saiyans around him. He may not measure up to even Goku, who was barely average height on Earth, but it would be a disservice to call him small. Vegeta is stacked with corded muscle, with a hard angular face to match.  It all adds to the menace: his stern brow on top of proud cheekbones on top of a high, wide jaw Goku might swear could cut glass. He looks for all creation like a frilled viper, maybe not the largest but the warmest and darkest black - and certainly the most deadly.

 

It coils in front of Goku, and in the stillness the beast melts away.  Something also drops into Goku's lap. 

 

"Get up, put those on.  You don't have much use for them yet as an illiterate but I can keep track of you better this way," Vegeta says.  

 

"I can read, just not great." Goku reaches to where he thinks he remembers Raditz clipped him into the seats and he feels for some kind of button.  He guesses there's a button. Hopes - he doesn't know what fancy pants kind of seat belt this could be he just hopes it isn't as needlessly complicated as the wound dressing- ha!  His restraints snick away from his chest and lap. Good ‘ol button! On his feet, he looks at Vegeta's gift, balling a small dark node in hist fist and turning purplish glasses, tilting them at different angles to watch the sealed coating flash blue with yellow-green flecks of barely visible circuitry.  He chuckles at his memories of another pair of shades. He slides the wide lenses on to cover nearly his entire field of view. They flicker to life with some kind of heads up display, and Goku frowns. Alien characters, right. 

 

"I'm pretty sure your planet doesn't write in Galactic Common - "

 

"Yeah yeah, I can't read these at all.  Got it," Goku says, chuffing half a laugh at his mistake.

 

Nappa reaches around the back of Goku's head and cuffs him.  "Don't interrupt Prince Vegeta." Goku hisses, and rubs away the heat, more surprised than hurt.  Vegeta rolls his eyes.

 

"Walk with me Kakarot, it's time to lay the ground rules, Nappa, call Shalla, Garang,” a thought crosses his mind, “and Chicor, if he’s available.”   
  
“I’ll check, sir,” Nappa says promptly, hand flying to his ear. Vegeta starts walking.  Stops and looks twice between the rolled silicone in Goku's open hand and pleading face.  He points at his own ear, laying Goku a heavy look until he notices the bud blinking inside.     
  
"That goes here.  Hurry up, ”

 

"These are some fancy glasses,"  Goku comments, fixing the earbud in place.

 

"They filter blutz waves, although they've been enhanced over time to compete with scouters.  Not that you have to worry about transforming," Nappa talks as though he finds that funny. Goku chews on that while they walk again, quiet.

 

_ The heck is that supposed to mean? _

 

Vegeta speaks again, tone as dictated as the commands he distributed to his crew. "You will not speak on this ship unless spoken to."  _ Oh boy. _ "You will not talk about your home planet, or answer any questions about your origins unless I am present and approve."

 

"Uh-"

 

"As far as my crew will know you are a failed incubator podling and a failed soldier, and you won't lead them to believe anything else. You will eat when I say you eat, you will shit when I say you shit."

 

"Hey-"

 

The incredibly tall Saiyan woman from before jogs up to them.  She must be Shalla. Her face of interest sharpens to another whole tone of amusement when she catches the tail end of Vegeta's diatribe.  Goku grimaces wide through his teeth, looking between her and Vegeta while she falls into step, smug. He's completely lost.

 

"You will not initiate contact with my crew in  _ any _ way," Vegeta turns his head far enough to glare daggers then turns away, too proud to stare down his nose - somehow, even when they're both standing it feels like Vegeta gets his nose above him - long enough for Goku to catch the implication. Or he assumes there was one.  He definitely missed something.

 

"Did I do something?" Goku stage whispers to Shalla, who tickles at his brazen-ness. 

 

"Don't talk out of turn little mister, we'll go over that soon," She winks, and Goku thinks that for all anyone wants to talk to him, he might as well be a fish.

 

Vegeta hums, stopping them under a porthole.  He and Shalla fly through without missing a beat, and Goku follows belated, looking back between Nappa and the others.  Nappa gestures that he go on, so he pulls himself through the narrow passage, emerging into a lightly furnished observation deck.  He thinks. The ship has been spartan in terms of comfort, the hard seating for example, but the utilitarian design lent to a nearly crowded, lived-in look, with screens crammed full of data and handy tools stored within reach.  A far cry from the sleek design of the station decks Goku healed on, where everything tucked away into airtight compartments that you might not find if you didn't know where to look. This room lacks the qualities of either, clean, but empty, underlit from the seams of the flooring and roof yawning open to expose them to the vastness of space.  Goku realizes he hears running water - a small channel rims the room. 

 

"You'll stay here.  I'll send bedding up by lights-out." Vegeta says

 

"Wwwoooow, really?" The source bubbles unseen, and Goku gathers his legs underneath him on the floor

 

Vegeta pauses halfway through sitting planting himself on a padded seat in front of a table, eyes flickering up and down Goku.  “There’s space with the crew, but I don’t want you saying anything unnecessary. Why are you down there?” The prince settles down while he speaks and pulls a sleek tube from under the collar of his armor to - well, it looks like he pries it apart.  Somewhere along the line the dismantling creates a handheld holopad. He drops it to the table in front of him, then produces a pen. Goku wonders where he managed to hide the pockets.   
  
“It’s my room, right?” Goku says.   
  
Vegeta holds gaze with him for a beat before dragging a matching bench half adjacent to himself.  He points. “Here, now.”   
  
Goku complies with alacrity, his enthusiasm bouncing the cushioned corner to nudge Vegeta’s knee.  He nearly curls his lip, and then begins messing with his holopad.    
  
For some reason.    
  
Goku stares, and Vegeta either doesn’t notice or ignores him.  Wasn’t there some reason he needed to sit closer?   
  
“Uh…”   
  
“What did we say about speaking out of turn?”  Vegeta growls as though bothered, and Shalla who stands at attention before them, raises her eyebrows nearly to her hairline.  Water off Goku’s back, he asks anyways.    
  
“Not to.  Did ya need somethin’ from me?” 

  
“No.”  Vegeta continues to ignore him, and Goku looks to Shalla for guidance.  A hint, maybe. She simply shakes her head minutely in disbelief. Goku sniffs and contents himself that Vegeta doesn’t plan to answer him for now, but he supposes this - whatever this is, might be better than wandering clueless and liable to break something.  For all he knows he’ll trip and punch through the hull of the ship and they’ll all implode. Or something. Bulma described space travel as ‘delicate’; Goku considered her detailed descriptions of the grisly ways space can kill someone anything but.   
  
Vegeta picks up the pen - ah, a stylus.  He writes notes over the interface. Goku leans forward, fascinated when the screen lights at the heels of his nib, tracing each precise character he lays down and converting the typeface to match the columns of text he annotates. “Ah!” Goku’s vision caps for the second time that day. Vegeta shoves him back by his face, nearly tumbling Goku over his seat.  
  
“Sit still, moron” he says, distracted.  The iron palm follows Goku’s face when he tries to maneuver away, but at least now it simply flattens his cheek.  
  
“Hey, quit it! I’m trying-” It’s difficult to talk without biting himself; he counts himself lucky Vegeta seems to understand he wants out of his space, because he pushes Goku’s head again before dropping his arm.  “WaH-”  
  
That actually does knock him over, one leg still curled onto his seat.  Vegeta leans back far enough to snort at his misfortune then he disappears from Goku’s line of sight to resume working, he assumes.  He props himself up on one arm and rubs his sore neck. Shalla openly laughs.   
  
“Try not to provoke the Prince.  He likes his personal space.” Goku’s eyes snap to her, intense.  He points at her.  
  
“She’s talking when she wants!  What’s that about?”   
  
“You’ll need to put a little work in before you can bother the Prince.” Shalla preens, proud of something in relation to Vegeta, but Goku’s not sure what.    
  
He ignores his confusion to crack his neck, both eyes screwing shut on the uncomfortable pulling. “I already bother him, though.”  
  
Vegeta pipes up. “You’re right,” he tosses the stylus, and it smacks Goku dead center between the eyes.   
  
“Ow-”  
  
“Howevee she doesn't act like a fucking child.”  Goku laughs, and Vegeta grimaces. “What’s so funny, then?”  
  
Goku reins in the gut busting, surprised.  “Huh?”  
  
“Why are you laughing.  I’m insulting you,” Vegeta says. Goku finds it curious he would give up the pretense of ignoring him.   
  
“Oh, yer right.  It is funny, but I’m not gonna stop being me.  It’d be rude to apologize when nothing’s gonna change, y’know?” He leans back on his locked arms, crossing his ankles over the bench.    
  
Someone snorts from the direction of the porthole.  “Someone insults you then you either say ‘yes, sir’ or you shove their shit in, third class.” Two Saiyans enter; the speaker Goku recognizes as one of the group leaders from the hangar.    
  
The other, tall, hair shorn nearly to his scalp with broad matte strokes of scar-broken ink stamped from his exposed arms all the way up to his face, grimaces heavy-lidded at his companion’s crass language.  “While you are right I must admit I don’t see you shoving shit often.” Goku’s eyes widen moony at the swell of his chest and arms, and Vegeta kicks him to interrupt his gawking.   
  
“Of course not, I don’t have to flaunt to show my class when I work with the best!” Chicor puffs, proud.   
  
“If you consider grovelling showing class, then,” the tattooed man says cooly. Nappa emerges to shove them both out of the way.  They both grin despite their bickering, and Goku reflects on whether he saw any group of fighters behave so naturally together.  
  
Vegeta sits up straight and crosses his arms, knees wide and planted directly on top of his feet.  It’s different altogether from the domineering sprawl he used the day before, in the quiet display of power rather than the open flaunting of it.  The saiyans fall into line in front of him as if responding to an unspoken command. Goku looks between them all and pulls himself to sit properly by Vegeta, even if he grimaces at his crossed legs.  
  
“Grand Vizier Nappa, Commander Shalla, Commander Garang, Commander Chicor.  I’ll congratulate you for following my orders without question on this mission, and now that we’ve secured the sensitive cargo I can debrief you with the details of our expedition.”  None of them respond, but their eyes sharpen almost uniformly in interest.  
  
“We are transporting a war criminal to Vegetasei to stand trial for treason and desertion. He has sensitive intel, and we are under obligation to escort him safely to homeworld.  This information could potentially lead to the end of this war as well as catapult the Saiyan race into a new era of conquest.”  
  
Nappa seems to be the only person unsurprised.  Goku struggles to follow the vagaries. “You’ve got other prisoners?” Vegeta rolls his eyes.   
  
“This is the cornerstone of the new Saiyan Empire, Kakarot, son of Bardock.  Say hello Kakarot.”   
  
Said Saiyan catches on almost a second too late, then raises a flat hand in greeting. “Yo, I’m Kakarot.  My friends call me Son Goku.”   
  
“Right, it was mentioned.” Shalla says, clipped.  The climate of their eyes has turned decidedly icey.  Seems they didn’t care for his greeting, or maybe something else Vegeta mentioned.    
  
“I’m telling you all this here in private to reduce his exposure to the crew as well as the risk of being tapped.  If his information falls into the wrong hands it could promise our doom as much as our victory, so it’s imperative that he and his origins are kept quiet." He looks rather sternly at each of them, until he settles on Chicor, who glances away, nervous.

 

"You." Something brushes the fly hairs at the base of Goku's head before a supple surface and five points of pressure extinguish the tingling, settling warm on the nape of his neck.  His bones leaden and his head nearly rolls slack. His eyes flick to connect the arm extended from a shoulder attached to a torso and a person. When he realizes it's  _ Vegeta's hand _ on him somehow inflicting this inexplicable malaise he  _ burns _ .

 

Vegeta talks, watery and faraway, pointing at Chicor with the other awful hand to punctuate some reprimand.  Goku pushes the unyielding limb as though he's being choked.

 

"Hey hey, let go!  What-" his lungs refuse to expand fast enough to shout, he can barely carry the sentence.  The feeling vaguely reminds him of the dead-limbed suppression he felt when someone would squeeze his untrained tail.  His scrabbling must catch Vegeta's attention, because, as a reflex or on purpose he squeezes Goku just a bit harder. 

 

Planting his legs underneath him catapults the bench to bounce against the wall into the channel with a splash strong enough to send a ripple of water halfway across the floor; some flecks steam a blessedly cool spray up superheated strips of exposed skin from his fingertips to the side of his face.  He whips his head up over the clamp to snarl right into that prick's face, driven on reflex more than any dictable thought. He pulls away from Vegeta in full bodied wrenches, hard enough to jerk the restraint before it releases as though burning, his own strength carrying him to tumble over his head.  He lands three-pointed to curl his lip at the prince, one hand covering the numbness receding from his neck

 

"Don't touch me!"  Vegeta stares, open hand half retracted from where he held Goku moments before.  He stands, thumping his thumb up to his sternum. "There some reason yer grabbin' me? It feels like there is! Idunno if it's a Saiyan thing or what, but if you like your personal space so much stay out of mine!" 

 

Vegets speaks slowly, for some reason.  "I was simply demonstrating that they should treat you as though you are my claim-"

 

"Am I!?" Goku doesn't have a clue what that means, except that it makes him mad as all get out.

 

Vegeta growls.  "You wish."

 

"I  _ wish _ any a this made sense, but I guess I'm too dumb for anyone to bother explaining!" 

 

" _ Alright, _ how about this? Saiyans are like plasma coils of adrenaline, and if I don't show them you're my territory they're going to ride your idiot fucking vibe into a complete meltdown.  This ship needs to fly, whether you want to be a disruption or not, and I don't need my crew chomping at the bit to beat the living daylights out of each other." 

 

The cool air Goku pulls through his teeth is manages to heat to boiling by the time it hits his lungs he's so mad.  He inhales once, twice. "Fine." 

 

Vegeta blinks.  "What." 

 

"That makes sense.  And ya only needed to do it the once." Goku crosses his arms and settles down next to Vegeta, subordinate.  He does however sit on the floor, which prompts Shalla to audibly smother a laugh. 

 

"What's so fucking funny?"  Vegeta snaps to her.

 

"Nothing, sir.  My apologies, sir." She has to overshoot to absolutely deadfaced in order to smother her amusement, and Goku smiles as privately as he can manage at her tangible effort.

 

"If we're done being nuisances,"  Goku assumes Vegeta indicates him in some way, but he won't dignify Vegeta with his attention, "then are there any questions?" 

  
“So he hasn’t betrayed us?” Garang says.   
  
“If he cooperates, then no.”   
  
Goku works the soft skin under the corners of his mouth between his canines.     
  
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” 

 

He hears Vegeta's (mean, absolutely dastardly) palms smack onto his knees.  "Weren't you done?"

 

"It's true, though," he replies, petulant.

  
Vegeta barks a laugh. “That’s not up to you Kakarot.  You ignored your duty to the Saiyan race by assimilating to your planet rather than culling it.  I can sway the treason charge, but I’m not sure what I can do about you running away.” Goku glares at him without turning his head, ready to protest, but Vegeta catches him.   
  
“Careful now, Kakarot.  You’re here on your own word.” Vegeta  leans forward with a loose finger raised and smiles at him.  “If you try to weasel out of this by saying it was all a ruse, not only will I not believe you, I will kill you.”     
  
Goku clenches his jaw, unsure.     
  
“Once I’m done with you I will go to your planet and take for myself what I am owed.  That was a Saiyan conquest to begin with, so it is mine for the taking.”   
  
“Earth doesn’t belong to anyone,” Goku says.   
  
“What, you think you can stop me?” Vegeta says.    
  
Goku remembers his conversation with King Kai this morning, about how long he said it would take to learn his techniques and that, ultimately, there was nothing to inherit because Goku isn’t a proper student. The vague descriptions he got couldn’t possibly translate into a usable recreation of the technique. It would take far too long to train up to Vegeta’s league, and Goku barely had a clue how he was going to bridge the gap.    
  
“No,” Vegeta tries to interject but Goku doesn’t give. “Anyone could.  Give me half a year and I’ll show ya.”   
  
“How dare you speak so brazenly to the Prince, third class!” Nappa finally seems to lose patience with this conversation.     
  
“The elite rule for a reason, only a fool would try to fight that.  Saiyan pride is our strength to conquer. You disrespect  _ my _ heritage, since you don’t seem to recognize it as your own, by refusing your duty as one of us.”  Vegeta says, calm.   
  
“I am a Saiyan.” Goku says, firm.    
  
“Then give me my dues.”    
  
“I was raised on Earth taught that strength is whatcha use so you don’t have to fight.  The strongest fight to protect, and I’ll protect my home from you.”   
  
Vegeta stares.  Goku turns his head only far enough for their mirror dark eyes to meet from under his brow, showing the prince how afraid he is, his doubts, and his excitement.     
  
Because Vegeta’s eyes may swim with the corrupted din of outraged birthright but underneath that same excitement glimmers back.    
  
“In six months.”    
  
Chicor sputters “I don’t - Vegeta this guy is nuts!  You don’t have to humor him!” He sneers at Goku. “Are you trying to get yourself killed, third class?”  Nappa blusters too profuse to make any sense of and Garang curls his fist over his mouth, pensive.   
  
“I can take what I want from him, any time I want it,” Vegeta growls, laying out his argument almost as an accusation to his crew “No one, not one person has had the balls to challenge me in years.  He is nothing to me - but I’m interested. The stark raving fool can control his power level.”    
  
“That’s absurd.  It was probably a bug” Garang finally speaks.    
  
“When is the last time one of you experienced a power reading malfunction from a courier?  I’ve seen it several times myself just since we’ve met. This guy has something up his sleeve, and he thinks it’s enough to best me.”    
  
Vegeta stands, rising to higher ground to smirk down at the Earth Saiyan. “I want to know exactly what gives him such absurd hope, and I want to crush it at its peak, so that he shall never question my absolute power again.”   
  
“Vegeta.”    
  
“You have something to add, Kakarot?”    
  
“You can’t put down your doubts about yerself by hurtin’ others,” Goku says, burning earnest intensity.    
  
And the fact he believes that so keenly is too tragic for Vegeta to find funny, so he doesn’t acknowledge it.  He turns back to his crew, says, “He’ll be accompanied at all times. Tell your comrades at your own discretion what you will - he can even train as long as it's kept private and we're on schedule.  We make our way to headquarters, for now, but in half a year we will return to Vegetasei for a combat trial.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No more talking head scenes I pwomise uw-
> 
> *eats shit into pavement, a lego nails my spleen*


	8. Finite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Won't be rid of me that easy
> 
> So scrapped the original thing a bunch and finally got some nerve again - and managed to keep my trademark lack of polish. I'm so proud

Bardock gestures to exit communique without sending for the nth time within the hour.  He plants his hand flat on the table, retracts it when his thumb depresses suspiciously dark from a grease spot he probably made tinkering.  He snatches a freshly stained washcloth and rubs it between his blackened fingers hard enough that the material squeaks, threatening to tear.  The artificial fibers enjoy a brief reprieve before he drops it back onto the tabletop and throws his full bodyweight into scrubbing away any more stains.  He really hates dark workbenches.

 

The sight of his balled fist stained by stubborn liquids turns his stomach.  A groan pushes to his mouth, unbidden, and he slaps the cloth into the far wall of his lounge turned makeshift lab. He drags a deep inhale.  His breath won’t seem to catch so he steps away from his clutter with his arm pulled over his head. A spectator might misinterpret his posture for an exerted man coasting his heart rate to heel, but this one knew better. 

 

"It's been two weeks.  It's normal to check on them, you know."  Bardock stops with leisure, drops his arm and looks over his shoulder to where Masala slipped into the room, silent and unnoticed.

 

"Here comes the shadow," he says, more cautious than alarmed.  The thing with Saiyans, Masala thinks, is that their overblown bravado belies any bluff.

 

"I'm not the only one hiding in plain sight.  Your kids never noticed," they say, selecting a seat from the pile of cabin furniture uprooted and pushed aside, and drag it to sit facing Bardock, 

 

He snorts.  "Don't be too impressed, only picked up the trick recently." He wanders a few steps to open the unit fridge with the toe of his boot, then stoops to grab a cold pak.  He stands and gestures an offer to Masala, who nods and catches the rectangular product. Bardock grabs his own and kicks the door shut, then sits back against the stupid dark table. 

"You're not going to ask why I've been following you?" they say.

 

"No point 'f yer just gonna tell me anyway," Bardock says, short. Masala unselfconsciously watches him split his pak open, sipping from their own cracked drink. 

 

"Not sure yet, we'll see." 

 

"What then?" His trademark Saiyan voice texture nearly fizzles his words into white noise. “I don't care much for people breathin' down my neck, yaknow?" 

 

"It's in your best interest that I stay undecided, _Saiyan_.  I wouldn't push my luck if I were you."

 

"Why's that?" He asks, gruff.

 

"Because," they heave a mighty sigh, then continue in tones Bardock thinks are _patronizing adjacent_ , "my claws are tipped with enough neurotoxin to decimate a platoon of your kind, and I didn't have to tell you I was here."  They blink, clearly inquiring whether he wants to play dumb long enough for them to explain aposematism in plain language. 

 

Bardock mutters about flamboyant xenotypes and earns a huffing laugh.  He frowns deeper, then says, "So why not? Ya had me; been here for weeks now, so presumably ya had your pick of opportunities."  

 

"I thought you weren't asking." They raise their bare brow innocently, and Bardock's face blanks out.

 

"Ha, fine.  Because I wasn't expecting to see you so soon at first, but then." They rock back in their seat to recall. "I've researched your kind for a long time.  Saiyans are almost as famous for their flippant parenting as they are their horrible personalities - or famous for bragging about it. Most people don't comment out of politeness, but you should know boasting about raising your young through trial by fire is pretty uncouth." 

 

"Yeah, we do that.  And?" 

 

"I was there when you forced the station to dock you.  I heard the transmissions, and I saw how desperate you were." Bardock rests the mangled container on the tabletop.

 

* * *

 

 

"If ya don't let us board I'll broadcast _our_ coordinates to the far reaches of this galaxy 'n bring Frieza's hammer down on us all!" Bardock shouts into comms, crushing the push-to-talk on the shitty old scouter nearly to breaking against his shoulder, freeing his hand to reach around and hurriedly key commands into the console.  

 

"I'm sorry, sir.  Saiyans are considered a neutrality liability and I cannot verify your credentials without records-"

 

"How's this for credentials!?" He rears up and jams his heel into a tactile button, prompting the video feed to cast his glowering face directly to the tower operator. 

 

"I didn't let you, how-" He stutters in audible terror and perhaps awe.

 

"Open the godsdamned doors," he hisses, feverish breath steaming from between his teeth.  Pods are cramped and hot to start with, more so after surviving weeks of travel with the stench of blood…

 

"R-right away, Bardock sir."  He mutters something about superiors to himself before Bardock relaxes, the feed cutting off.  He tenses all over again when the atmosphere field blooms to catch them, jostling his pod so violently he's bounced entirely out of his half sprawl across the armrests of his seat.  His shoulder and upper back hit the ceiling hard enough to bruise even with the padding, however he holds stubbornly, curled around his charge. He barely manages to initialize landing procedures around the rattling, then shouts, guttural, when he has to pin twicemuch his weight in place despite the turbulence (and who decided that time could make his heft feel like its own center of gravity?  He’ll flay Chronoa herself for testing him like this, godswilling). When the computer guides them automatically to an accommodating hangar he gets a lovely chime notifying him that Raditz landed safely, and his vitals are still on. His pod, however, misses the landing pad, bouncing to a screeching halt halfway into one of the industrial walkways. He grunts and shakes his pounding head out, still stiffly holding on so he doesn't land in a painful heap against the downward faced cracked porthole.  The hydraulics hiss, computer automatically pushing the door open upon detecting breathable air. The edge must catch the ground somewhere, because the pod tilts up for Bardock to face an army of stampeding chitinous boots, then legs, then blasters, all pointed in a well-disciplined line no less than forty heads long into the gaping lip of insulation.

 

He checks that the ventilator is keeping up before he shouts to the security force. 

 

"I won't move!  Take them; they're not gonna last long!" 

 

Someone brave manages to rub enough of a spark out of whatever brain spells they managed to scrounge together to yell back, "It'll be a lot easier for us to manage only one of you!"  Bardock coasts a frustrated growl into a meaningless shout; some stagger, and the entire formation echoes a nearly unanimous, decidedly lethal switch of their safety caps. 

 

"On my pride as a Saiyan, you, yer passengers, and your staff won't come to harm if you would - fuckin' save them!  Please!" He watches bare astonishment gape several mouths and tighten some shaky hands. He only resists shouting more on account of the look of these jumpy sods.  After some muttering that same many-eyed officer calls out again.

 

"We'll sway protocol for you, Bardock, but who are these two?"

 

His head falls back to bump against the padded rim of his pod, wary, swallows on his dry throat hard enough to click.  He holds eye with the guard before his last bastion of stubbornness crumbles, the deadweight of his charge unfurling from his tight hold to lay visible across his lap, if not encumbered by a misty clear respirator.  He’s pallid, hot and breathing far too fast, covered in blood with his hair tangled to matts but the resemblance is undeniable. "They're my sons." His voice cracks.

 

* * *

 

 

"And?" Bardock asks, flippant or trying to be.

 

"It was vexing." Masala leans forward to balance their elbows on their planted knees, thoughtful.

 

"You had the gall to ask for the lives of your children when you…" they trail off, clearly at a loss to illustrate their impatience and, by the look they're giving him, the implication should speak for itself.  "And you begged for Saiyan lives for that matter - people who cannot be innocent." Bardock snorts but they continue.

 

"I took my chance on the one that resembles you.  Only would have had to imbalance some of the medication and -" they cut a flattened palm back vaguely around the height of their neck, and Bardock curls his nose severely. 

 

"But his energy - it had the clarity of water.  I've never seen anything like it. It's my understanding that Saiyans have culled much of their own young, and that may be why your Goku-" 

 

"Kakarot," Bardock corrects, half hearted. 

 

"Sure," they snort, and Bardock's conscience parrot's the sentiment too quickly for him to feel comfortable.   "As an exception to your rules, he may be the Saiyan's first chance to grow beyond their nature."

 

Bardock interrupts them again, "Hold on hold on, you're givin' him way too much credit.  He was as ornery as any other Saiyan baby, easy-"

 

"IF he was, then no matter how sweet your agony would taste I could not end his life.  I refuse to be like _you._ "  Their spite confirms one of Bardock's several theories.

 

"I culled your homeworld, huh?"

 

Masala smiles to themself, bitter.  "You didn't even recognize me - I’m a bit insulted, actually.  I've been told our look is difficult to forget." 

 

Bardock pushes his chin down and plants the heel of his palm on the edge of the table, flexing his fingers around his forgotten beverage.  "You want some kind of apology?" 

 

"For my face?  No, I'm adorable." He snarls.

 

"I don't regret those planets, Saiyans're built to conquer and we relish it.  Your race fell 'cause of their weakness - nothin' more to it."

 

"Somehow, that comes across a little thin." They say, calm in their dewy resonant voices.  

 

"It's how we're hardwired.  Nothin' beats sinking your teeth into the jugular of someone what tried to kill ya." 

 

They snort.  "If it's the right of the strong to live, then why save Vegetasei?  Why are you protecting your children?" 

 

"No 'why', I just did." He clenches his teeth the moment the words leave his mouth.  Saiyans and non-Saiyans alike dogged him for years after Vegetasei dodged the bullet for - he didn't know what, and frankly he didn't give a shit about their agendas.  He never spoke a word about what transpired except to Raditz and the King himself - and even then the details were sparse. Vegeta hand-waved his terse report on tentative good faith and the greater galaxy contented itself to explain away his isolation with mourning, or so he heard.  Once a colleague left a frankly horrifically misinformed novelization of his "tragic love" on his desk as something of a joke. Bardock dealt with that in a similarly cagey fashion, and the team member’s demonstrable unwillingness to meet his eye after said ‘dealing’ assured that if anyone else found gross fantasies about his life, they kept it to themselves.  He never yielded, so now he wonders when his lips became so loose - even for this much.  

 

"Whether the lives you save outweigh the ones you've ended will be my say."

 

"What's that supposed t'mean?" Bardock asks.

 

"It means until I decide I'm going to kill you, your ass is mine."

 

"I'm taken."  He says, distracted.

 

"Ew, no; I know better than to pursue a mated Saiyan.  Even widowers." 

 

Bardock's eyes snap to them, darkly unreadable and tense like a wound spring. "I could kill you first." They brush off the sudden chill in the room as one might shrug off a coat.

 

"If I go missing, you'll be the first person to answer for it.  You won't be able to stay long enough for Goku's friends to arrive." 

 

Bardock knows it, but it doesn't mean he can't continue to try to intimidate them. This effigy of a race long passed, however, remains quicker to the punch.

 

"Whether you like it or not, there's no going back to the Saiyan warrior you once were.  Your race aims to usurp Frieza and reign in the tyranny he built, is that correct?" 

 

Bardock shrugs, concerned only by his own spite.

 

"Yes, then.  Try as you might, the end of Frieza means the fall of galactic dictatorship.  There won't be a void to fill, because once Frieza is done the Space Patrol and Galactic feds will crack down on the Saiyans - I've heard they've already started.  You don't-"

 

"Yea very well researched," Bardock lays his arm over his stomach and tosses his head, making a show of his easy recline to emphasise his biting sarcasm.  "I'm real concerned about the political climate. I’ve got a seperate chain handle for accolades of conscientiousness. Magnanimity’s my bread and butter, and all.”

 

"Very well, I guess it's better you see for yourself, anyways."  He expected them to lash out - those idealistic types usually do.  It narrowly leaves him at a loss for words before he realizes that his new shadow just implied that, whether he likes it or not, he once again will find himself at the center of imminent change. 

 

And Masala knows this - as well as the fact that any self respecting narrow minded prick will assume that this is still about Bardock. 

 

"So you just - waited for me on this station?" 

 

"Haha - no, when I heard you were going offworld I may have… accelerated the hiring process to get as close to the border as possible.  It's near impossible to get stationed on Vegetasei, so I was thinking of floating my resume to Frieza Force administration, actually. They've got the best intel on you, not that there's been much to report on for like - fifteen years or something.  You need to get out more." 

 

Great, now Bardock’s would-be assassins are bold enough to criticize his sociability to his face. And all before brunch.

 

Would-be-assassin ignores his emphatic eye rolling to finish, "I got lucky."  They stand to bin their trash in the waste receptacle with a well-aimed toss.  

 

"I'll say." A lot of coincidences and dumb decisions led him here.

 

"I'd wish you your best behaviour, but that won't benefit my evaluation.  Keep right on tearing yourself up, though. You're pretty funny when you're frustrated." They traipse out of the sliding door;  walk out of sight before they seem to remember something and lean back into the frame. "Your guests will probably want Goku’s status when they arrive, so I'd go ahead and get the inquiry over with."  Bardock aims to fire a blast right between their eyes but they disappear as quickly as they arrived, and he can no longer sense them nearby. He blinks clarity, then tilts his head back, aghast. 

 

He should have just attacked them to start.

\-----

 

He wouldn't call it unease.  Something itches, in the back of his head, unsettling but unable to leave him unsettled per se.  It feels like there's something he needs, that he must find, but a smoky din seals away the _knowing_ in the cradle of his head.  This peculiar impetus electrifies him from the pit of his stomach, warming his extremities, curling his tail into knots in his sheets, keening his mind toward that strange something - unstoppable, indelible, and as indifferent as the movements of celestial bodies.  It's always been there, he thinks. The sense of urgency; it just never sparked bright enough for him to notice. No matter how dull his clerical duties or exhaustive his crew, the moment he steps away to rest in his personal quarters it eats him. No, not it. _He_ eats himself, he's starving.  In the dark of his room, lit only by the fingers of light glancing off of faraway stars he kicks out of his cot and stares out into the vastness, the black reflecting his Saiyan dark eyes challengingly, knowingly; nearly as endless as Vegeta now finds himself.  His tail tip twitches agitated energy around his ankles, puffed up twofold with the pins of electricity rattling up and down his spine.

 

This feeling - it dashes the contentedness he felt before this mission.  While the loss of that self-assurance smarts it is no crippling blow, rather - Vegeta suspects it will lead to something greater.

 

The heavens move, and so does he, but this is the first time that fogginess in the back of his mind has shifted with them.  That, or it's the first time he noticed.  

 

_You were born to rule, Vegeta.  It is in your nature as the Prince of Saiyans, the most proud warrior race to walk the stars._

 

Vegeta cracks his neck just for the satisfaction, and threads his sand-smooth fingers together, flexing them brutally for that same release of tension.  If he were more idealistic perhaps he would find romance in the premonition of endlessness, that long before he obtains it, he would personally assume an intrinsic loss of the finite.  No, as the pragmatic type, he simply spares the complexities of this phenomenon a passing observation and calls the conflagration par for the course. As he was born to rule, he was born to become eternal, and the proof need not be ruminated upon when he can move closer to that inevitability with his own two hands and feet.  

 

Lately he walks his ship as his own center of gravity, and he can tell his crew feels the pull.  Yes their fear and respect always entitled him to their unflinching attention, but he can feel how their eyes burn with a whole new light of curiosity.  They watch him ready and waiting, looking to see if they can catch the moment his chrysalis breaks, metamorphosis complete. There is something different about this Vegeta - from the man he was not a cycle ago, from his predecessors, and from his race.  If there is a peak he is the pinnacle, and immortality is his ticket to the heavens. 

 

Vegeta turns away from his vast reflection and pulls on his thermal leggings, then tucks a simple loose sleeveless shirt into them.  Universe bending revelations are fine and all, but he needs to get proper rest if he wants to make it back to base and Gods know circadian rhythms are a bitch to manage off planet.  He'll sweat himself to exhaustion and knock himself out for the night, make the most of his allocated breathe-in-my-direction-and-I'll-break-your-legs time. To hell with his miscreants if they see and get rowdy.

 

_So much for Kakarot's quarantine offsetting restlessness, they're bolder by the day._

 

He does quietly suppose there can be no accounting for royal charisma, and with the recent palpable air of potential he dons - well, he can't blame them. 

 

The dull sounds of a small ruckus nearby punctuate his thoughts poignantly, and he smiles to himself the small satisfaction of being unaccountably important, and toes on his boots, ready to feel the burn of exertion.  His self satisfaction reels, however, when his chamber door irises open and a dumbfounded Chicor obstructs his path, gobsmacked and soaking wet.

 

"I hope this isn't a prelude to bother me, because unless it concerns life or death I don't give a shit until oh-300."  Vegeta's tail sweeps up to his waist to escape the puddling on the floor.

 

The soaked Saiyan visibly steels his nerves and salutes, harried.  "I was simply surveying this wing of the ship, Prince Vegeta."

 

Bullshit, but Vegeta can't begin to restate his lack of concern.  He decides whatever punition-worthy shenanigans he's up to would be below his pay grade even if he was on duty, so he'll give him a pass until Shalla spots him.  

 

"At ease and fuck off." Vegeta passes through as though no obstruction falters him.  Chicor wheels back to avoid Vegeta stomping directly through his foot. He makes it only so far before he pauses, turning over his shoulder. "...Where is Garang?"

 

Chicor swallows. Speaks.

 

"On refueling duty, sir.  It's a long stretch to the next unmanned station and you wanted us topped off-" 

 

"Don't," Vegeta shuts him up with a raised hand, "explain my own orders to me.  It's Garang's job to watch Kakarot, is it not?"

 

"Yes, yeah, absolutely."  


"And in the event he is not watching Kakarot, who covers for him?"

 

Chicor smiles, caught, and pushes back sopping brackish black hair from his face. "Me, sir.  I'm here because he got the slip on me." All Vegeta needed to know.  

 

"Tell me, does it seem likely Kakarot would find his way to my personal quarters, near the opposite end of the ship?"  Vegeta asks, bitterly saccharine.

 

"Well we're not picking up his power signature and I know he's interested in fighting you, so-"

 

"Did you try following your nose, dumbass?"

 

Chicor visibly startles, scandalized. "Wh- how am I supposed to know his scent!" 

 

Vegeta realizes that there's been some measure of miscommunication, and he can't rightly blame Chicor for his confusion. He can, however, feel his annoyance involuntarily stitch the arch of his brow millimeters higher, cowing the larger Saiyan satisfyingly. 

 

"Kakarot's intersex.  He'll smell different enough to distinguish even if you didn't scent him."

 

Chicor blinks, then closes his eyes at length, recalling what little personal information they received.  "Hold on - but he reacted so badly when you…" He looks up, then to the side, unsure. It takes Vegeta a moment to puzzle that the bumbling refers to his display of dominance when they set out.  Then it clicks - it's crystal clear why Chicor's drunken woes are all about romance.

 

"In the interest of sparing myself more second-hand humiliation next time you drag me out for spirits, you should understand that fairer sexes aren't beholden to their instincts." If Vegeta has to commit any more altruism he’ll vomit.  He stalks down the hall to the community hub.

 

"I don't really get what you - hey!  Where… my Prince!?" Chicor calls after him, unsteady and Vegeta growls his annoyance.  

 

"You know how to find him, so beat it before Shalla finds you, or worse my break ends." Vegeta punches an alarm into his wristband and taps open the commons resource unit. Unfortunately, he doesn't grab a waterkey or fresh cloth fast enough because Chicor closes in to run his mouth off again. 

  
“Who else is gonna annoy you when you clearly don’t want company?” Cheeky.  Vegeta’s own fault, though. Somehow his early off-brushing wasn’t stern enough to leave an impression when Chicor first boarded; although Vegeta can’t say how getting beaten half to death came to count as encouragement.  What he does know is that now he can’t let Chicor catch him on a break, because he effectively loses it the moment he’s spotted. Chicor will hound anyone for a good goss, and Vegeta seems to be his favorite unwilling victim.  As intolerable as his chattering can be, Vegeta finds it a palatable alternative to the terrified reports greenhorns tend to stutter if they can manage a word at all. 

  
So Vegeta glares at him to uphold his image, and goes back to rummaging through understocked unit - which they both know is as close to an invitation to continue as it gets.  He also tosses a length of terrycloth roughly at the height of his head. Chicor towels off appreciatively. 

  
“Oh, this. Hey - why is there like, decorative water inside the ship?  And why is Kakarot near it?” 

  
“It impresses dignitaries when we have to board them.”  Vegeta thinks back to exactly one occasion this purpose was served and the fact that he didn’t think twice about placing Kakarot squarely in the way of that function.  Well whatever - everyone on board held their own measure of exhaustion of showboating to non-Saiyans. 

  
“Ah, yeah.  More of that.  Well Garang warned me that he was slippery about the injections so I thought I’d ambush him - in and out quick - but he got mad as hell.  Totally got the drop on me the moment I was done. That unfilial - he rubs me the wrong way. Idunno how Garang deals with it. 

 

"Anyways I already checked around Raditz and well, I haven't really spent any time around anyone - uh…" 

 

Vegeta snorts, and interjects, "no kidding." 

 

Chicor takes the snipe in stride, or maybe he doesn't notice.  "I don't know if I'd know his scent if I caught it, and - wait, what was that?  You know so much about getting omegas?” Chicor gestures crudely and Vegeta turns entirely away, exasperated.  
  
“Apparently enough to understand that pack theory was shelved nearly two decades ago.  Yes, they’re weaker - inferior even, but not any more than you are to me.” Chicor’s laughs as though he almost considers his early acquaintance with Vegeta _fond_ .  
  
“Me, weak like them.  Sure. Okay - but if the difference is so big, why'd Kakarot flip out so bad?  Getting scruffed by _you_ should have worked without a problem.” Vegeta makes to object when he remembers what was so strange about it to start.  
  
“No, he almost lost consciousness.”  It worked - maybe too well. Popular word compares the sensation to holding an untrained Saiyan’s tail - just comforting instead of all out debilitating.  Recently submissive women have become huffy about being touched, but if it feels nice then Vegeta doesn’t see the problem. Lord knows nothing usually shuts the ornery women up fast enough, aside from literally grabbing tails.  
  
And Kakarot lacks one.  Vegeta snickers like the cat that got the cream, and Chicor lights up with interest.

  
“What do you say when we find him we conduct a couple of tests?”  Studies on tailless Saiyans are nearly impossible to find; however, Vegeta would be the first to admit that at this point he is far from intellectually curious - he just wants to bother the weaker Saiyan.  Perhaps it’ll even make him more docile in the long-term. Unfortunately for Kakarot it doesn’t look like it will only be ‘the once’.  
  
Chicor, long distracted from drying off laughs openly, impressed. “Damn, you really want to put that kind of notch on your belt?”  Vegeta sneers, offended.  
  
“I’d sooner bed a literal clown.”  Chicor’s thick eyebrows shoot up nearly to his smeared hairline.  


"Well yaknow, that's good.  Shalla would probably have a fit."  

 

"And there it is - your prying should be chronicled.  And you underestimate her, you know." Vegeta slings his towel around his neck, swigs some water before topping off his supply again. 

 

"Oh." 'Oh', wisdom abounds.  Vegeta swears he can feel his ears shrivel it’s so inane.  "So you and Shalla aren't…"  

 

"I don't fraternize,"  He says simply.  

 

Chicor leans in, ever the gossip. "She's okay with working for you like this?"

 

Vegeta taps the unit shut and turns to double back to the training rooms.  "I told her if she was so interested she could apply to Council - years ago.  Until the matter is decided she's my comrade, and otherwise not my concern." He looks Chicor up and down once more as he passes him, exhausted of his companion’s endless mind for sex. "Mop the floor too before you leave."

 

Vegeta's watch pings.  He scowls at it, and the background hum of the ship crescendos into an ear rending roar.  A pitch throws the unprepared Chicor into the windowed corridor wall while Vegeta drops his center of gravity, tail whipping out from it's loose curl around his waist to steady him.   "Get up!" Vegeta shouts at where the disoriented Saiyan shakes his head out, far too sluggish. As soon as his feet are properly under him Vegeta springs after his subordinate, twisting his fist in the back of his armor and tossing him viciously back into cover.  

 

Not fast enough, though.  The cabin floors and walls are designed dark and matte to eat as much light as possible, but  they can’t stop the direct light Vegeta's body was trained to absorb from fracturing his ego, even if just for a split second.  

 

"Fuck!"  He flinches back from the viewport and presses his face to the ground, creating a seal around his face with his arms to shield even the now painfully sharp decklight.  He hears the emergency shutters snap closed on the light but doesn't dare look up. The insides of his head feel raw, and his joints throb in protest of an aborted transformation.

 

"Shit - Prince Vegeta, you didn't-" 

 

"No!  Get my courier, now!" Chicor's characteristically heavy footfalls only skate the deck back to Vegeta's room, and he waits no further than a moment for the warrior to return to his side.  He reaches out to feel the shields fit into his palm, then he slips them on and feels for his wrist band, dialing up the filter. He sits up and blinks his eyes open to a passably muted barrack.  Chicor stands attentive, his own courier long replaced and lit with a status readout. "The photosensitivity will wear off soon. I'm clear." _That was far too close._

 

"Do you think it was the station?"  Chicor eye-scrolls through commands to bring up a line to control.

 

Vegeta's hands on his wristband outpace him.

 

"Shalla, want gimme some news." Shalla laughs relief that Vegeta is still alright and abrasive. 

 

"We think it was a blutz mine on the station - it's torn nearly completely in half.  Vital signs account for the crew onboard, all nominal but…"

 

"Garang is still onboard?"  Vegeta feels the beginnings of a migraine coming on, but stands anyway, stomping toward the bow of the ship. 

 

"Yes, sir."   
  
“Do you still have contact?” He asks, impatient, and reaches for another terrycloth to smack over his face.  
  
“No, we can’t reach his courier.”  
  
He curses, at once on his feet again to search tab open Garang’s suit readings. 

  
Also non-responsive.  No helping him now.   


"... If the station interior is directly exposed it's only a matter of time.  We need to cut our losses. Can we undock before Oozaru fucks us?” 

 

"I can’t say from up here - these old stations are so automated that it’s difficult to manually abort before it finishes siphoning.”  
  
“Which will take?”  Vegeta power walks toward the bow, drenched from discomfort.  There’s the sweat he wanted, hell.  
  
“With the station in this condition, indefinitely?”  
  
“Not what I want to hear, Shalla!”  
  
“This is _Garang’s thing_ , I’ve only got his engineers.”  He can hear her pounding her tactile interface in a mirror of his own frustration.  
  
“Then drop the atmo-field and blow it off, we’re not in a position to lose our cargo here-”  
  
“But Prince Vegeta-”  
  
“You fucking dare,” he snarls, breaking into a jog with Chicor at his heels.

 

"Prince Vegeta, Kakarot's vital signs aren't on the ship either." 

 

He stops in his tracks, ice closing his throat.

 

He checks the ping he ignored moments before, a notification that Garang found Kakarot sneaking onto the station with him.  Vegeta sprints, instantly leaving Chicor in the dust. He less runs or flies than falls through the corridors, catching corners like footholds and using his momentum to never break pace until he catches the lower lip of a porthole, slinging himself up and - a fucking emergency bulkhead.  Vegeta summarily unpots himself, the bent metal seal flying away with a single punch. He pulls himself into the only unshielded deck

 

He hasn't been here since that first day, and he doesn’t have the time or mind to look for how it’s changed as the home of someone he can neither comprehend nor place because his eyes are set to squint through the light to see it cut with glimmer of dual-chrome fired glass and endless debris, cabled onto one heaving behemoth and another slowly spinning humanoid body.   
  
“Vegeta!  We have incoming!”  Concerning, as Vegeta ended up in Frieza’s hands under very similar circumstances, but all of the pieces of his mind he can hold together are focused entirely on discerning life from the dead spiral Kakarot has fallen into.  
  
Kakarot’s cable pulls taught, and he nearly tips back over his head once more before he seems to find an orientation and sets himself to face away from Vegeta, directly toward the expanding maw of the great ape.  Vegeta breathes, relieved more for the fidelity of his word than any concern for Kakarot, then manually keys him into their voice channel. Vegeta’s anxieties redouble at the way he simply seems to watch Garang struggle and roar through a bone-rending transformation.  He can’t say for sure at this distance, but he postulates that Oozaru may intimidate him - he doubts he has any voluntary control of the transformation. Fucking low-classes.  
  
“Kakarot, no games now - sound off!” Vegeta shouts into the channel, silence responds.  
  
“Are you alive or dead, you _braindead_ oaf!?” Vegeta hears a worrying rattle before Kakarot’s voice rings loud and clear, if not a bit stilted.  
  
“For someone talkin’ proper you’re sure rude, yaknow?”  And trust this imbecile to entirely ignore mortal danger.  
  
“You better get your story together fast because you're going to want something to yell between pod dives.  We’re retreating, get it together and cut yourself loose.  We’ve got - what’s coming?”  
  
Shalla chimes in without missing a beat, “Their outfitting says Galactic Feds but they’ve got enough mixed signage to be mercs.  Their mother ship's small but they fit it to tow up to intermediate-class freighters, and they’ve got a dozen or so dog fighters. Four to seven free-floating combatants per ship - they’re probably here for the Empire’s bounty.”  
  
“They must have had an informant on 32 - fuck! Kakarot -” His continued silence doesn’t give Vegeta confidence, and he’s still frozen as far as can be seen. “I know you aren’t trained to free-float, but you need to get back to the ship _now._ ”  
  
“What about Garang?” he asks, loud and clear.  
  
“We’re lucky he only destroyed the station when he transformed, but he’s not going to be turning back for - fucking too long. It’s a tragedy and all but he isn’t getting back on this ship.”  
  
“You’re just gonna leave him?” Kakarot’s voice finally colors - sure he’s pissed, but Vegeta feels he’s found his footing now.  An inscrutable idiot is an unpredictable idiot.  
  
“It’s him or all of us, or do you want to die out there?” Shalla threatens where Vegeta would rather not.  He turns away from the heavy brightness to curl his lip at the floor and a mess of upturned textile bedding.  It occurs to him that Kakarot’s room is a complete mess. The sheets are torn and soaked - water spread everywhere and furniture knocked to the corners of the room in clear signs of a struggle.  Vegeta realizes he can’t picture, even with this, how Kakarot could have gotten away from Chicor with his piddling strength.  
  
“Come back or I will bring you in myself - I only need you alive, you know.”  Vegeta threatens gravely  
  
“Why, yer just gonna let these guys take one ‘a yours?”  Undaunted - ignoring Kakarot until they made landfall seems to have backfired, or so Vegeta comforts himself.  Better to think Kakarot’s caution waned than to imagine there was none, although the coin wobbles before it lands.  A fucking frustrating thing it turns out, being leashed by your own word.  
  
Vegeta works his jaw on the many ways he can describe evisceration to a man whose brain clearly stops on the third syllable, but instead bites out an order to Shalla to close down the field.  
  
“Your suit doesn’t have air, but it’ll keep your eyes and blood from boiling long enough to retrieve you before you completely suffocate.”   
  
He glances back up only to see Kakarot turned to face down at his ship, too far to discern his expression but he is locked uncannily on Vegeta, even from this distance, in a room he hasn’t stepped foot in the last fortnight.  It occurs to Vegeta that Kakarot might not lose his place even in the endless fall of space.  
  
“Coward.”  The ice breaks.  


* * *

  
  
Goku can’t reach the weird glasses in this helmet, but he’s always been accused of having a hard head, and he puts it to good use by ignoring Vegeta and turning back to  
  
-what, by the splitting of scars over its scalp and uncanny calm, can be nothing but Garang.  
  
It stares at him, then curls thin black lips back from a nearly canine set of sharp teeth.  Garang must be reprimanding him in that quiet way Goku is just becoming accustomed to, or maybe he’s bracing himself for his next move.  He may have resented a babysitter when he realized that no one, neither Raditz nor Vegeta, was willing to see him, and he could hardly get two words out of the musclebound techie together but he realized that of nearly everyone he’d met so far Garang probably treated him the most decently.  His quiet seemed to come from temperament, and although he did deliver the _hated, absolutely despised_ injections he always came at Goku head-on.  He’s probably not better than the rest of them, but Goku, from running and experiencing defeat daily understands that he is _strong._  He doesn’t figure why that wouldn’t be enough.  Vegeta helpfully continues to bluster half-explanations about his actions then interrupt himself with his own threats and bravado in that impressively absolutely _useless_ way that everyone seems to want to talk since leaving Earth.  Everyone’s talking, but it’s all nonsense; they don’t have the decency to explain it to him properly anyway.   
  
The ominous bright storm draws his eyes back and back until a light drops several smaller ones before Goku’s eyes, and after a few moments of squinting he realizes that must be those empire merc guys or whatever running for them.   Not much time, then. Back to his Goku briefly marvels at how the clingy bodysuit, but not the space one and helmet, had expanded with him to such a size. He reneges his doubts about the silly ‘one-size fits all!’ advertisements Bulma so liked to scoff at.  Something ominous pulls his eyes back and back to the light. With how brightly it burns he doesn’t have a clue how he would put it out. He can overwhelm it with a solar flare pretty easily seeing as he can look at it, but it only lasts moments, and he can’t immobilize himself if bad guys are coming.  Garang murmurs a growl so deep his bones quiver.  
  
**“GO BACK, KAKAROT.”** ****  
****  
Goku shakes his head, not sure that Garang would hear him, but he talks anyways, face splitting in the smile he saves for when he knows he's really in over his head.  
  
“Not without you I won’t.  Idunno much about following your rules, but I don’t think it matters too much that I do.”  
  
In a way he knew, but everyone - for so long...  
  
Vegeta audibly cuts out.   
  
He can see that the monster’s consciousness flag even as Goku curls around a modified wind-up, unable or unwilling to take air beyond the carrying capacity of the ship’s air supply - or however that works.  He can probably carry on empty lungs endlessly, but Goku guesses that such a massive transformation would leave someone breathless to start. He throws an open palm directly back, arm and fingers bent to temper the violent cleaving of this particular ki.  
  
“Kienzan!” He staggers his twisted hips and snaps his fist shut, disc radiating to a shivering edge from his punching knuckles.  He unwinds, snapping the disc through the air so that his follow-through directs the curved trajectory below then up -  
  
Garang’s great jaws split in an ear-rending roar, his whole massive body tensing before he slowly begins to shrink, tail spinning off into the endless void of space.   
  
Shalla worms into Goku’s ear again.  “What have you done!?”  
  
“I’ll watch him ‘till he’s back to normal.  Is he gonna pass out?”  


“You might as well leave him there for what you’ve done to him.”  She spits.  
  
Confusion twists his face, and he figures she’s being ridiculous about another one of those unspoken rules or something. 

  
“Tell Vegeta to hold off the big ones.  I’m only strong enough to keep a few busy fer a while.”  
  
“I don’t believe you’re qualified to make that assessment, you know.” If Goku had been on his feet hearing that he would have tripped, but he guesses he’ll live by laughing to himself, more worried than she is.   
  
“If you don’t like how I’m doin’ it then you shoulda come out here yerself.”  
  
She cuts off too. Goku guesses he’ll have to hope he can make it before they leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngl a huge barrier to posting has been that... I feel like I really haven't managed to nail Vegeta down. Maybe it's because I'm writing him in a place in his life so far out of the range of canon, but when I'm totally consolidating Goku's characterization as a kid and an adult to come up with... this, which I more or less like - it just makes me more dissatisfied! I can do better, but not by ruminating. 
> 
> PS, I made some art and character info (plus some intensive character sheets..... if you're familiar with Hirohiko Araki's process) while chewing on how I want to progress. It's all traditional though, so I feel like it's not clean enough to post with the actual fic like the other one (lol). Would anyone be interested in a gallery? Will have to transcribe the character sheets though, my handwriting is just - untenable.


	9. Oh, Brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double chapter post. This one was oodles of fun to make but it was Too Big, and if I posted a chapter about a third of the length of this fic I'd shit and die. Stay tuned for gallery and transcripts later today, g'dwilling.

Raditz bursts onto command deck, apparently emboldened enough to make a scene after two weeks of slinking around with his tail between his legs.  “Where is Kakarot!?”   
  
Nappa takes a moment from blustering hurried commands to flash Raditz his gaping jaw, no doubt prepared to let loose his whole deck of wind-baggery before Cress barks at him for a reply.  Nappa flashes him that, ‘I’ll handle you later’ look that normally shakes him in his boots, but he feels of the attitude that he cannot be fucked - and his treads could use the break.    
  
So he sniffs, clenches his jaw, and stomps over to the less visibly occupied commander. “Where is he?” he demands.    
  
Vegeta, front and center with his arms dourly crossed doesn’t look away from the shapes converging on two lone Saiyans far from them.  He does however manage to pry syllables from his tight-mouthed frown.    
  
“Making a mess of my mission.  The rate he’s going he’ll fulfill his deathwish before I can grant it to him.”   
  
Raditz bites his tongue on the first syllable to to cross his dumbass mind, catching the implication that Kakarot may be better off left to the raiders.  Vegeta appreciates his knowledge of his place and discounts him for cowardice simultaneously.    
  
“You need him alive.  You swore to Bardock he would make planetfall.” He speaks anyways. All in a moment Vegeta nearly loses his handle on his patience, reminded of his mounting suspicions that he played into the hands of - at the end of the day - a third-class washed up has been.  And now, his disappointment of a son only promoted due to a high innate power level dares to try to use the same tactics to manipulate  _ him _ , prince Vegeta, without half his father’s wit.  This defence Raditz managed to clumsily put up somehow not only insults Vegeta but Bardock’s machinations as well - so all that remains is to spit in his face for trying.    
  
“If your father cared so much about Kakarot’s wellbeing then he should have gotten on his knees and begged me for an oath,” Vegeta says, uncrossing his arms, prepared to act on his decision by clear and resounding spite.    
Raditz’s face falls aghast, then enraged, looking out to the crew for any backup, any sign of support or displeasure.  “You’re all willing to waste this entire mission and give up Garang -”   
  
“Shut your shit breathing mouth, Raditz!”  It’s Chicor that snaps, teeth bared and eyes notably wet.  “Don’t you dare even mention him. Every word you say drives me up the fucking wall.  You don’t have a clue, because it is all your fault - you and that idiot brother of yours and unless you plan to pay me back with your life I’ll make you wish you had!”    
  
Vegeta luxuriates in vicarious satisfaction and pride in his crew, and nods to Nappa to drop the atmosfield.   
  
Raditz looks about the room, eyes wandering to each of the stony faces either glaring at him or locked on monitors.  He bares his teeth and balls his fists, years of invisible frustration and conflict visibly undamning.   
  
“You all…” he tapers off, unsure and unhappy and then he shouts loud enough that several turn on guard in their seats, “To hell with you!  You pride yourself so much as Saiyans, but when Bardock warned us - where were you all when Vegetasei fell!?” He steps forward, mad eyes locked on his palms.  “Where were the elite when the planet was scarred and the people slaughtered!?”   
  
Nappa laughs, finally finding a moment between confusing the crew. “No one here gives a shit, you don’t-”    
  
“I’m not  _ finished! _ ” Raditz surprises them all when he grabs the nearest water flask and smashes it to the wall past Nappa’s head.  He turns on his heel back to Vegeta without pause. “I thought with my promise and contributions at least - my family would be taken care of, right?  But when I came back, my brother expired and my mother -” He interrupts himself clenching his fist, his knuckles cracking with the force. “If Bardock, a shameful low-class warrior can ascend to such strength then was he wrong to try to save them!?  The weak that made him a force that could rival the Vegetas and stay the hand of Frieza himself!”    
  
He closes his eyes, sickened and spitting mad.  “My father lost his spark, and my mother - she was so  _ weird _ , and Kakarot came back out of nowhere and he’s so… them!  Those things I’ve despised disappeared and I… I regretted it!  It’s infuriating!”    
  
He raises his fist to Vegeta, for the first time filling out his own imposing figure.  “My little brother is pathetic, and odd, and joyful and to hell with you for making me see that!  I would have gladly been your hands and feet if you ever had the decency to at least not fuck me!”  Vegeta’s eyes widen warningly under the furious curve of his brow and Chicor jumps to his feet, enraged but Raditz is already tearing out into the corridor, stripping his armor and tying his hair into a low nautilus shell.     
  
He hurriedly keys into the docking unit, and punches it open when emergency override won’t unbar his path.  Two of Vegeta’s goons thunder down the corridor behind him; he braces himself against the frame and fires warning shots to persuade them to find cover.  “What the fuck!” His thoughts exactly; every decision he’s made in the past minute somehow gets exponentially more stupid - in no way barring opening fire inside a  _ space ship. _   There isn’t time.  He rubs his face down with his hand, the dumb laser-firing one, and runs inside.  He speeds past the utility suits - two spaces notably devoid of accoutrements - to the battle suits, with higher durability and personal life support.  He jogs down the line until his rough eyeballing decides  _ this will do _ and he unmounts the helmet.  He reaches for the sleek chest piece of the suit when a fist materializes in his peripheral vision and he snaps his head back, narrowly avoiding the strike.  It’s Shalla; she doesn’t give him room to breathe, hitting a snappy tempo of neat jabs toward his chin and sternum. He catches her fist with both of his arms bracing the crown of his helm, which creaks worryingly but holds, then her responding elbow cracks his teeth together quite before he can see it.  With his eyes rattling in his sockets he, for the first time in a long time, he sees his surroundings clearly. He locks onto her eyes beyond her low stance and high guard, cutting with cold. She’s not asking questions or apprehending him peacefully, she wants him burnt and bleeding. He dodges the next strike, sidestepping out of the path of her momentum.  She snarls at his resistance, making use of her experience to narrow the sudden distance strike by strike. Soon - too soon, but he’s backed up far enough. His heel edges the lip of the cabin that inevitably leads to the port door and he throws his hand back against it, bracing to tank a hit for this massive opening but Shalla’s sharper than he credits her. She retreats into the corridor faster than he can blink, can fire, blast door sliding between her and him and the shrapnel that cuts him.  He exhales a shaky breath, counting his lucky stars that the atmosfield kept the cabin from equalizing and launching him into space. He holds eye with Shalla, face hard and jaw clenching on the other side of the semi-clear porthole and pulls himself into the thermal padded inner suit. He winces at the pressure cuffs on his tail, but they’re comfortable when fit, then reinforcing. He hasn’t worn a Saiyan make battle suit before, simple at a glance but dark and keyed with semi-matte triangular plating.  That’s all he has time to consider before stepping into it and snapping the run of locks and joints together. He glances back to the door before he fits on the black reflective helm, forcing Shalla to glare into her own eyes and engages the courier sync while the lock hisses engagement with his suit. He bounces back into the mouth of the half-eviscerated stretch of station, not daring to turn until zero gravity drifts him into the ceiling, where he bursts away at full speed, inner hall curving out of sight with him.

 

* * *

 

Shalla, Cress, and Basil all tear out the corridor without prompting.    
  


“Gods, he really didn’t turn out.  Guess he couldn’t be Bardock’s if he didn’t have at least a few screws loose,” Nappa gloats, as though to recover his dignity through defamation.  He gets an affirmative round of similarly disarmed chuckling for his effort that tapers off at Vegeta’s icy reception. Nappa huffs to himself and turns back to his control board, only to find control missing.  He sits heavily and scoots into his desktop, muttering about his responsibilities before…    
  
“Nappa, what do you think you’re doing?”  Vegeta asks, razor sharp.    
  
“Uh, I’m simply- proceeding with undocking procedure so we can retreat, sir!” He says, meandering his way back to confidence.    
  
Vegeta turns on the balls of his feet without taking a step and, methodically, begins to divest his hands of his gloves.  Finger by finger.    
  
“Sir…?” Nappa asks, hands frozen above his terminal.    
“I remember ordering you to drop air.” He says.  Gloves removed, he folds down the thumbs and lays them palm to palm over Chicor’s monitor.  Chicor glances between it and him, confused and a bit intrigued.    
  
“Yes, but - sir, it’s standard protocol.  We need to leave before they board us or… The station’s a massive deadweight and we could… If it’s Frieza Force we could all be captured.  It’s not worth falling into his hands again-”   
  
“If Frieza showed his scaly hide I’d run out to greet him!” Vegeta hisses, mind made about something; his crew edges unsettled, suspicious of the what.    
  
Nappa looks clammy, and tightens his curled fists on his thighs.  “We’re not prepared for this raid, sir. And Bardock - he’s impotent, we can get away with losing a couple of brats-”   
  
Vegeta shouts a laugh to space above him, interrupting Nappa once more.  “And how exactly, HA, do you plan to even leave?” He smirks, canines catching throw lights.  “I can hardly believe it, but those buffoons have the right idea. You couldn’t remove the umbilical if you wanted to.  Shalla said it;  _ no one can. _   Our best tech is out there choking on a vacuum while we sit pretty - not to mention that you forget exactly what’s at stake.”  Vegeta smiles down to Chicor. He jumps to his feet, energized by the look he recognizes from exactly every occasion there was fun to be had.    
  
Said commander continues, “It’s been - what, a decade since Frieza weaponized blutz bombs?  They wiped out or captured every Saiyan ship they ambushed until we caught on, and then all we did was flee.  He forced us, Saiyans, allies of satellites to run from our own greatest strength. The best we could hope for was a quick escape, but now - with our newly engineered ships, and armor, and couriers, not only are we equipped to fight back, but we have some of the most capable combatants in the Saiyan empire to do so.  No. Kakarot was right. Running is a coward’s mistake, and I, Prince Vegeta, will not be caught dead turning tail from some no-name mercs in the fucking boonies.” He nods to the standing squads either side of him and crosses his arms, smug. “Suit up, we’re going to obliterate them.” 

 

* * *

Goku realizes very quickly that despite his experience and his enemy’s nearly clumsy technique that even three are more than enough to overwhelm him.  He counts it a proper shame then that he’s stumbling - or whatever you do when you fumble in zero-gravity - between these four.    
  
They dropped off of one of the two small ships; Goku curses and throws up his dukes, ready to box them off if they dare to come in too close.  They raise theirs in kind, and Goku realizes his mistake: putting up a hand-to-hand defence against enemies wielding blasters - with no discernable chargeup of ki to warn him.  He dodges to the outside, lip pulled back about the distance it puts between him and Garang. The shots land squarely between them, not strong enough to be deadly but definitely dangerous.  One fighter, massive and red with a gnarled set of tusks body slams into his side and pushes him against the station. Goku tries not to be confused about this - he has one less flank to watch and it seems neither the two ships circling or combatants apart from the four are interested in joining.  Then Garang, whose transformation still grips him if only by a thumb and finger, fires an open mouthed super-charged  _ ray _ of ki that pushes the idle ships back even further.  Which - cool. No wonder they won’t come close.    
  
Tusk retracts his hand from Goku’s flank and throws himself into pummeling him, but Goku catches the punch with his free arm.  He jackknifes his knee between them and twists away with the follow-through, wrenching himself out of the last vestiges of Tusk’s grip.  Goku’s inertia throws him into a spin he rides, pulling his arms in tight and pinwheeling his leg around, landing neatly foot to bulkhead on the long stretch of station.  Once again - he’s more comfortable without a blind spot beneath his feet, and so he looks up, never confused with the burning ki of many combatants surrounding him. Tusk audibly roars his frustration - which reminds Goku, wouldn’t he need a space suit?   One of the other four is wearing-   
  
Nevermind.  They’re coming.  He’ll bother someone about it later if he doesn’t run into Vegeta first, or get his lights punched out, or die, or more likely forget in   
  
In an instant.  Several strong people close in; Goku’s mind flatlines.    
  
Tusk hits him overhead with both hands clasped together and - does he have six fingers?  Two thumbs - they grip Goku’s high guard from the wrong side of his hands; he less evades than tries to throw him in surprise, but he’s too solid, only leaving enough breath for Goku’s feet to weave away from those goring tusks.  He lands with his arms caught once more and his back to Garang. Those others light between them, effectively cutting him off despite his efforts. He can feel that the transformation is already over, but their attention is on him, and they’re not moving in to attack.  Tusk pulls him in for a headbutt and Goku takes stock of the lattice of their arms in time to jump clear of his head and wrench his arms up with him.    
  
“Son of a bitch-”

  
Just in time for three blasts to nail Tusk squarely in the chest.  The strange grips slack and Goku grabs hold of his limp wrist, catching him as a meat shield then tossing him toward his comrades. One sniffs to his comrade, "Figures he'd fuck it up." 

  
They must decide they’ve had enough of their blasters.  Two lime green-ish men about Goku’s stature with strange white hair along with a larger suited fighter push the floating body aside with all the consideration of nasty combatants with a grudge to flank him, giving him as little space as possible to jump their kicks and weave their punches.  Their strength individually brings Raditz to mind so he does what he can manage until he can work a plan together: tanking every blunt hit he thinks won’t destroy his suit and directing everything that lands away from his vitals. They push him to the edge of the station near immediately; before he knows it he’s lost the assurance of solid ground underfoot.  That’s also when he realizes he’s lost track of one of the green ones.    
  
“Here little monkey!” Goku’s legs are knocked up from below with thunderous force, and he flips overhead to land upside-down in the grip of Bug.  It wasn’t a suit at all. It tilts what he can only approximate as a chin up to reveal snapping fangs splitting a soft, nearly humanoid mouth. He blinks, and one of those other two buries a fist in his gut.    
  
“Told you they weren’t as much trouble as everyone chalked them up to be,” the one that hit him says while he tries not to spit into his helmet.    
  


Goku kicks that one in the mouth.     
  
“Aha!” Green two shouts in both shock and laughter.    
  
“Fuck!” His companion shouts, his fingers fly up to stem the bubbles of blood but they can’t seem to slow the spread of it.  “Get a better grip on ‘em, Gods-” Bug loosens his grip to readjust and Goku doesn’t miss it - he throws his elbows back into what he hopes are joints then wraps his arms around himself, feeling his own pulse.    
  
The atmosphere around him bursts in a violent shock and Goku’s assailants are sent tumbling away in all directions.    
  
“What was that!?” Green One bites out.  His companion manages to halt his pinwheeling and catches him, glaring at his triggerhappy double.    
  
“Why Saiyans are a pain in the ass, even weaker ones can usually use energy.”  Goku doesn’t stick around long enough for them to finish, blasting back toward Garang, or where he remembers him.  It takes him a moment to pin down his ki and he makes toward where he moved but he falters, grips his stomach.    
  
He took a lot more damage than he should have.  He feels - and he can’t describe it any other way -his energy hiccup, the flow impeded by heavy blunt force injuries.  Goku concentrates on circulating his ki, and something moves ahead of him. Garang is upright and conscious, and his eyes are on him, focused and blood-chillingly  _ livid _ .   He raises a hand to Goku with the telltale spark of ki gathering in his palm.  The tail-lobbing Saiyan shouts and hits the brakes, slamming his heels ahead of him into the station hull and flattens his back to ground with a bone-shaking BANG before Garang fires.    
  
-At Bug, whose segmented arms were raised to grab him again; his shoulder and a good chunk of his torso dissipate with the light of Garang’s wave.   Goku shuts his mouth to watch the combatant fall limp.    
  
“Garang… you scared mE - !” His voice runs high when he’s jerked painfully down by his leg, something crumpling the hull where Goku’s head once rested.  Goku pulls himself tightly into his legs using Garang’s grip as an anchor and smacks his palms into the hull to bounce over his head, completing half a rotation and settling into a wide airborne stance.  The wind punches out of him though - taking a full breath hurts, and he sags almost down to his knees, arms bent and shaking from the exertion.    
  
Garang straightens to full height in front of Goku, eyes flicking between him and the now three assailants; the two green men and revived Tusk with his heel planted in the warped metal where Goku’s head just was.  They seem hesitant to face Garang, inching away from the corpse of their comrade with their hands at their sparking scouters. Garang pulls one of those micro-expressions, neutral at a glance but any one that knew him would swallow spit.    
  
“I’d tell you to relax now if the rest weren’t coming.  Since you want to save my hide so bad watch my back. You handle these.”  He turns away from them as eerily nonchalant as ever, and Goku smiles at him, offsetting the deep furrow in his brow against the pain.    
  
“Sure, dunno how long I can keep ‘em for though.” He straightens back up with a hand compressing his brachioradialis and trades places with Garang without a second thought.  He lifts his hand up to push back against his shoulder and throws the elbow back, then extends his arm to ball his fist and rotate it in loose circles. Garang rolls his neck for a satisfying series of pops, then pulls up his knees.  He guards his chin with one fist and pushes the other down in a stance Goku hasn’t seen before, squared off with the two ships piggybacking several more fighters each.   
  
“If you’re worried about Vegeta dropping our air, don’t,” he says, still calm.    
  
“Why, yaknow sumthin’?” Goku pulls his back fist tight next to his smarting ribs and offers the other up, half curled and tense between him and his emboldening enemies.    
  
“No, just don’t,” Garang says in possibly the least reassuring manner Goku thinks anyone has ever tried to comfort him in his life.  He tries not to huff a laugh to save his ribs, but no dice.    
  
Goku feels Garang’s ki surge, then he kicks off - friction curving him into the crackling shield of the first fighter.  Goku buckles down, playing passive to stall for time while Garang handles the vast majority of the problem. Tusk and the gremlins look to each other for a moment to confirm - yeah, these cocks really just played that card, and that’s enough time.  Goku shouts, planting his palm in tusks shoulder before he can react and wrenches the whole arm around behind him. He ducks a wide swipe and jumps back, visibly crushing Tusk’s blaster to a useless hunk of metal. Tusk roars and dives for him, only for Goku to bounce it off of his prodigious forehead.  It doesn’t do much damage, in fact it doesn’t slow him down at all - but it does wonders to piss him off.    
  
“You’re dead, monkey!” Goku takes the hit for his cheek, but benefits from keeping his senses peeled.  He spins back just as Tusks knuckles brush his helmet, killing the force applied. He scrambles to cover guard his abdomen, but Tusk’s elbow pierces through his guard, sending him into the corner of the station hull.  Goku tries to slap the deck to ease the blow, but he’s shaken and tumbles off the side over his head into a half bent spin. He reorients himself and shakes his head, then gathers his ki in his elbows and wrists. He snaps his head up, barely parrying off the first blast coming for him but the second one hits, sending him tumbling through space in a whole new way.  This time Tusk closes in on him again before he can equalize, rounding out below him to cut off his spiral and plant his knee into his sternum. He can’t breathe, he can’t make a sound, he can’t see. His mouth yawns on a silent shout, and then the force kicks in and he’s thrown back to the gremlins, limp. Two snatches him by his hand before he can fall past them, then locks his head in the joint of his elbow, taking advantage of the soft neck joint and effectively cutting him off from regaining his breath.     
  
“Hurry, we won’t get any reward if we don’t manage to bring one back, even if they’re probably low-ranking.”   
  
“Hunh.  Wait, is it a guy?” One asks, tactless.    
  
“I can’t tell with these Saiyans, hey - oh, I think they’re out.  Hey,” Goku’s eyes are still open when he comes to, shaken but the grip loosens enough for him to drag a laboured breath.  Which hurts. “Are you a guy?”    
  
Goku blinks, then coughs.  Something about this is familiar.  “Yeah.”    
  
“Told ya.”    
  
“Doesn’t matter, just knock him out again before I hit all three of you.” Tusk returns fuming.    
  
“Ha, on it.”  Goku’s eyes widen and then he’s spun in place quite before he can process it.  Then two thumbs cross under his chin and his back thumps against the station hull - He didn’t even realize they moved him back to it.  He pushes at One’s face, trying to winch his arms between them and although his training has improved his strength, it isn’t yet enough to bring any relief.  The stars over Two’s shoulders begin blinking at random, and Goku realizes it must be black dots swimming, he won’t stay awake much longer. Or bright dots. A path of brilliant blue blooms across the void, and Goku wonders if after all this he would experience death, or something close to it, so soon after such a close call.  Or he would.    
  
He couldn’t feel the black dots, but those blooms individually give off monolithic grades of ki.  A shimmering silhouette, tiny, distant, and stalwart stands still against the noise energy. The lights drop, and the figure rotates with the last glimmers before it too blinks out.  Goku, in his confusion, finally realizes that Vegeta has joined the fray.    
  
He isn’t sure if that’s a comforting or terrifying thought to pass out to.    
  
His gasps, chokes, and his vision blackens entirely, the vice on his collar sinking in further to shake him down and then -    
  
They’re gone.  He takes a painful and dry and delicious gasp of stale air and rears up, only to see another fighter in that strange black armor from before standing between him and Gremlin Two.  He reaches out with his ki.    
  
“Rad-!” He croaks and coughs, windpipe refusing to perform, and Raditz whirls around.     
  
“Where do you get off, sneaking away from the ship?” He seethes.    
  
Goku gapes like a fish, then shuts his mouth, the corners edging up.     
  
“And you pissed off Vegeta, and so did I!  I’m counting that as your fault right now - augh! Can’t believe, hey!”  Raditz turns his temper on the three commandos. “Fuck you!”   
  
“Fu- fuck you!” Gremlin One stutters, aghast.  Tusk recovers more quickly.    
  
“Great, now we actually get to fight someone decen-”   
  
“Decent?  You want a good fight and you’re going three on one?  Cheers but not on my little brother you aren’t!” Raditz backs up and hauls Goku up to float shoulder to shoulder with him, facing their enemy.  “Get up Kakarot. They handed your ass to you now show them where they can shove the favor.”    
  
Goku swallows heavily and straightens, every extremity tingling from oxygen deprivation but standing here next to Raditz while he’s raring to go - it ignites him.  He widens his stance favoring his outer knee, with his fists balled on either side of him. He can’t see Raditz’s face in that helmet, but he knows he’s as excited as Goku is. 


	10. Blitz

Tusk roars and dives for the both of them.   
  
They pipeline him, darting away from each other then forward past Tusk with an incredible burst of speed that has him skipping to a stop against his own momentum.  Raditz bashes Two overhead with his balled fists, and Goku anchors himself off of One’s extended blaster to kick his foot through his brow bone. It’s a vicious attack, but he can only move so much more before his body gives out, so he decides to aim for critical or deadly damage.  He follows his own forward momentum to hook his legs around Two’s neck and swivel on him, mounting his shoulders.  
  
“ka, me…” He can only whisper, but the wind up ki is consolidating despite his voicebox.  He falls back with the last of his force and wrenches Two overhead, flipping fully over to send him spinning below.  Goku’s arms are already gathered behind him. Tusk closes in to smash his fist through Goku’s helmet but Raditz kicks Two away to catch it.  
  
“ha, me, HA!” He catches himself with his ki, slamming One dead on if his screams are anything to go by.   


“No!”  Two slams into him just a moment too late, snarling and throwing them into a dead spin away from Raditz and Tusk.  “I’ll gouge out your eyes, you little shit!” Goku knocks his hands off his guard and catches a followup kick with his shin, stamping his boot into the center of Gremlin’s open chest as a launch pad prompting howls of rage and indignation.  Distance gained, though not for long, Goku grimaces against his sore throat and scans the starscape. There!  
  
He rockets toward some debris, snagging a length of rebar and bouncing back toward Two, knee forward and bar braced against his back.  He’ll need to reinforce it with some ki to hold up against people this powerful but it should work. The rush of time it takes for Two’s snarling face to fill his field of view gives him exactly two opportunities simulate his next course of action.  
  
Goku rears back, spinning the bar in his palm to reverse his grip and leaning away from his leading knee to approximate his best floating javelin throw.  Two snags his knee - the one injured from before and the strength of his grip brings the feeling of his kneecap shattering to mind, but he ignores it, stepping onto his shoulder and tossing.  
  
Gremlin one, armor demolished and bloody beyond belief bombs a screaming dive for Goku; he’s interrupted when he swallows cold metal.  Goku presses his mouth into a line at the sound of bones cracking, teeth shattered and spinal column disintegrated - letting the ki charged javelin pass through without losing speed.  
  
“He was - you, die!!” Goku gets pulled down by his leg again, then an elbow slams into the soft joint of his hip.  He tries to scream, but it feels like something in his throat tears; he can only make an awful gurgling noise. He tries to punch down in his haze.  His punch falls wide when a leg snakes between his and up his chest, enemy out of range and flattened out of sight. Goku glances down when he feels himself locked in a grapple, finds Gremlin disturbingly blank-faced and concentrated on grabbing his foot.  He’s gonna snap his achilles tendon. The pressure tightens and Goku feels the band of his leg stretch to snapping as his heel is flexed - Gremlin is too far to reach, too concentrated to care. In his bid to deliver pain his blaster sits forgotten on his wrist, too deadly to do what its owner can accomplish with a bit of imagination and elbow grease.  Goku fires a shot into his eye. He screams and covers his squirting wound, grip loosening enough for Goku to kick away, flipping once over his head and not giving Gremlin a single breath to recover before he launches a flurry of knuckles and elbows into every prone spot on his body. Gremlin swipes wildly; Goku catches it, snapping his knee up into the elbow until it cracks and bends the wrong way.  Gremlin shouts and wrenches it not away but closer, landing a headbutt that rattles Goku even with the helmet. Goku punches him in the eye, getting him to finally let go again before he can lay in any more damage and shakes himself out, darting for the exacerbated blind spot and landing hits for every wild swing or shouting kick Gremlin throws. He’s wearing out and he’s losing it, the only question left is if Goku’s body will give out first.  

  
Then Tusk smashes into Gremlin from above.  Goku springs back, then smiles his relief up to Raditz, armor scuffed and a few panels on his abdomen cracked but otherwise unhurt.  If his ki is anything to go by - Goku darts away, turning back out of curiosity.  
  
“Double sunday!” Raditz belows, and the two fighters far under his feet shout their last before they disappear into dust.  Goku watches the beams curve out of sight into space uninterrupted, then glances back up to Raditz, visibly quite impressed. Raditz’s shoulders hike as though he’s gloating, then he falls down to Goku.  “Okay, now we get back to the ship. You good to fly by yourself?”  
  
Goku swallows painfully when he realizes he can’t respond and clenches his jaw, teeth bared in a small grimace as an open refusal.   
  
“I don’t know what that means.  C’mon you’re hurt - and that other guy could be back…” Raditz spots the still body of what was once Gremlin One and his head bounces in realization. “You actually got him - and fought off the other one?”  Goku nods, solemn.  
  
“Huh, I didn’t think you would…” _be willing to kill someone.  The good types usually don’t._ Goku’s wide eyes stay locked on Raditz expectantly.  “No, nevermind. More are coming.”  
  
Goku frowns again and turns a bit away from Raditz, taps his shoulder and points.  Raditz follows his finger to where a distant smoking fighter ship explodes, illuminating a remaining good number of fighters and second buzzer.  Raditz groans.  
  
“No, you’ve done enough - wait!”  Goku zips past him without hearing him out, fully aware that Raditz will follow if he stays ahead.  “Kakarot!” he shouts, and Goku barrel rolls playfully. He has a plan and he can feel the familiar energy of Vegeta’s crew returning to the ship.  He uses this short reprieve to take stock of the enemy, slowing just a bit to expand his ki to the edges of the battlefield. Yeah. Just like he thought.  
  
Vegeta and his crew are cleaning up shop.   
  
“You’re crazy, we can retreat now!  We don’t need to stick our necks out any further and I don’t know how long we have until Vegeta decides to leave us!”  Goku looks back at him at that, then flips stomach up to Raditz and crosses his arms, laying a deep frown into him that quiets him momentarily.   
  
“I hope you run into a rock.”  Goku dodges around a rogue AC unit without breaking eye contact.  Raditz thinks that Goku could probably win a staring contest with a mirror. “...If you weren’t already hurt I’d punch your lights out.”   
  
Goku  smiles an unruly smile and Raditz deeply hates him.   
  
“Just, don’t fight them.  Make it quick. Whatever you’re trying to do.”  Goku nods, the very picture of ease and flips back forward to accelerate toward Garang.  Then he veers off, giving the battle site a wide berth until he can better pinpoint Garang’s ki.  There, bloody and cold and vicious and fielding an unbelievable fight is Garang. He consistently moves around the crowd and weaves through their maneuvers to surround him, leading them to fire on themselves and tossing attacks into their number to wear them down.  The buzzer weaves figure eights around the battlefield employing a pretty solid hit and run, but Garang has the timing down, keeping a second, third, or fourth eye at the rate he’s multitasking on the ship. He manages well enough to lob springy balls of ki into it’s path that sit a few moments before detonating.  Goku has fought an army, but there’s a vast difference between brute forcing an attack and leading slews of heavily capable fighters around by the nose. It nearly makes stars dance behind his eyes watching, but there’s one problem.  
  
This is a battle of attrition, and Garang won’t last against even this reduced number on his own.  Goku coasts to a stop, and Raditz winds clumsily behind him, also distracted by the battle.  
  
“That guy, I don’t know why he’s a tech.  He’d be a huge deal if he primary’d as a fighter.”  
  
The talking goes in one ear and out the other for Goku.  He watches avidly, then braces himself to spring into action.  
  
“Wait, that looks hot.  He can manage and I’ll admit you’ve gotten stronger, but you shouldn’t figh-”  
  
Now!  Goku suppresses his ki and falls into the fray, cursing the brightness of his suit.  They’re pretty distracted, though, so he just tracks their movements, staying as still as possible for his languid rise into their battle.  It is by no means slow, though. Goku lands just as projected, unwinding his energy to seemingly POP just in front of Garang, between him and his entire army of attackers.   
  
He throws his flared hands to the polycarbon on either side of his temples, and Raditz dives in after him, finally catching on to the familiar maneuver with the benefit of a tinted helm.   
  
From the perspective of the army, a star bursts to life on top of their toes.  Shrieks ring out across the atmosfield and some attacks that were charging misfire.  None of them are able to move until their eyes finally adjust, and Garang is gone.  
 

* * *

Raditz laughs with Garang rubbing his eyes viciously in his grip.  “If you ever do that again I’ll smoke your hide and wear it for the equinox.” He sounds happy for someone tossing threats.  Goku flips half to face him and gives him a thumbs-up, taking his offer into consideration. Garang blinks the blackness of space back into his eyes.  
  
“Oh good, that’s Raditz and Goku.  I nearly attacked you.” Raditz makes a sound not unlike someone swallowing their own tongue, and Goku can’t laugh this time, but it hurts his ribs anyways.  Garang looks around.  
  
“Wow, we really left them in the dust.  Kakarot, why haven’t you used that move before?  It would have been good to know about,” Garang says. Goku shrugs below him then turns fully so that they face each other.  “Hm. If you’re both here, then I guess I can assume that Vegeta and the rest are fighting too.”  
  
“No, that’s why we need to hur-” Raditz interrupts himself when he sees Goku nodding emphatically, smiling like they’re sharing a joke.  
  
“That’s good.” Garang says, neutral.  
  
Raditz remains still enough that he must be pulling all manner of faces under that helmet, before he starts, accusing.  “You knew.”  
  
Goku nods again.   
  
Raditz looses an arm to rub the thick layers armor on the back of his head insistently, as though something there itches but he can’t quite reach.  “Why didn’t you tell me!? No. I know why, neither of you answer.” Garang drums two fingers on the arm wrapped around his chest, caught. Raditz shoves him off with palpable disgust.  “Fly on your own!”  
  
“Sure.  You could have let go before, you know” Garang replies.  
  
Raditz thunders, and Garang looks back at him, a bit interested.   
  
Raditz opens his mouth again.  “Have you two been fighting or something?”  
  
Garang shrugs.  “Kakarot doesn’t like his injections so we’ve given each other some pointers.  He’s improving fast. That’s how you knew how to predict my movements, right?” Garang directs the question to Goku, who only smiles and plants his hands on his hips, then swivels back to facing the nearing ship.  


Raditz fumes. “Oh look at you two, all buddy buddy.”  
  
Garang shrugs.  “I watch him, he lets me work.  What about you?”  
  
Raditz falters. “What?”  
  
“You’re way less annoying.”  
  
“Oh, thanks.  You’re especially annoying,” Raditz retorts.  
  
“Like that.  When I told you your shoulder pads sucked you were mad as all get-out and you didn’t say a word,” Garang says simply.   Raditz crosses his arms at the unpleasant memory, but he doesn’t speak immediately. It’s almost thoughtful.  
  
“...Well I just chewed out Vegeta so I guess I don’t have very much to lose.”  Raditz replies bitterly. Garang flips his head up at him, genuinely surprised, then looks forward again.   
  
“That’ll do her.”   
  
Raditz’s arms uncurl. “What.”  
  
“Oh look, the ship.” Garang deadpans, then he leads the three of them under the belly of it.  
  
Raditz looks back and forth between the docking port of the ship they passed and Garang, who coasts up into the hull to key into a panel Goku wouldn’t have noticed.  He glances at Raditz’s fidgeting, then looks up to rotate a handle.  
  
“Your battle armor is hot. One of its secondary functions is to absorb ambient radiation and use it to scramble scouters.  You didn’t really use it, but we should all dock through the clean deck.” A seam breaks in the hull of the ship, then folds open, revealing a docking port larger than the one they tied the satellite to.  
  
“Oh.”  Raditz replies, and Garang sweeps his arm forward in a sarcastic invitation. Raditz enters first, then Garang stops Goku.   
  
“I’m just warning you, whatever injuries you have are going to feel much worse under gravity.  Especially the bad ones. How hurt are you?” He asks.  
  
Goku tries to draw a full breath and feels his own rib cage halt him, and he can’t speak to tell Garang about it among other things.  Goku raises a hand level to his shoulder and shakes it noncommittally. Garang’s eyebrows arch.  
  
“Alright tough guy… Oh.  Whole party’s here. Hurry up, it’s fucking cold.”  
  
Goku looks back at a group of dark armored Saiyans flying toward them, some flying circles around each other and others carrying what looked like prizes.  Garang grimaces at them, probably considering the mess. They gravitate to the smallest of them, occasionally bumping shoulders with him and thumping their chests but his arms are empty.  Vegeta looks up at Goku.  
  
He disappears.  Garang and Goku both start, then Goku flashes back to the twenty second Tenkaichi budokai - when he was entirely out of energy hurtling down to Earth and crashed into a speeding truck at terminal velocity.  That’s easily second to how hard Vegeta slams into him. He nearly feels his shoulder dislocate where Vegeta’s armored elbow pins him, and he’s hurtling backwards through space trying to relieve the pressure.  He resists squeezing his eyes shut, locking one onto the mirror-like surface of the helm nearly touching his. Goku sees himself, tiny in reflection despite their closeness with his helmet lights illuminating his pained grimace, the thin skin under his eyes darkened under his tinted glasses.  He’s bright and pale against an endless black backdrop, the infinite of space swallowed by the warped reflection as they speed past the ship, the station, and far, far from any one that can help. Goku tries to kick at him, taking advantage of his size to strike but Vegeta catches it across his body and pulls, twisting his lower body away so that he can’t struggle anymore and straining his hip, his stomach, his ribs.  Goku coughs on the pain, buries his chin down to his chest sweating bullets.  
  
“Call me a coward.”  Goku blinks, then draws a breath haltingly.  
  
“You were so keen to insult me when I was far away, how about now?” Goku screws up his mouth, annoyed.  He shifts a bit in Vegeta’s grip then tries to look behind himself to space. Vegeta pushes him forward and jostles him, rehandling him to get a grip on the rim of his collar.  
  
“ _Don’t_ look away, Kakarot.  I’ve waited for you to finish your treatment, now there’s nothing stopping me from using every tool at my disposal to get exactly what I want from you without killing you.  Did you like your time alone? Were you scared, waiting for me to find you take you for everything you’re worth?”  
  
Goku doesn’t really know what to think.  If Vegeta means that he’s going to see more people than Garang on a daily basis, then he finds he doesn’t really mind.  He might even get an opportunity to fight them. Goku’s eyes dart around Vegeta’s helm, trying to approximate where his eyes might be.   
  
“You’ll answer when I speak, fool!” Goku realizes what’s going on when he suddenly feels short of breath, even with his training on Kami’s lookout.  
  
“So you noticed.  How do you think everyone was breathing in space, idiot?  We have a field of atmosphere up, but it only goes so far, and we’ve left the bubble.”  Vegeta slows down their mad dash for space. Goku grits his teeth, tries to calm his breathing and slow his hammering heart.   
  
“You have until you suffocate to tell me - in your own words - how much of a coward you think I am.”  
  
Goku’s lip curls.  Water is wet, and Veget is an ass beyond belief but this takes the cake.  He doesn’t even know how unreasonable he’s being right now. Goku shivers, and tries to take a full breath of air to say something, anything.  
  
Then the pain in his ribs knocks the breath right back out of him.  He screws his eyes shut and pants open mouthed for any gasp of useable air.   
  
“Is it that fucking hard?  You’re more simple than I thought you were.  Speak, Kakarot!”  
  
Goku realizes he’s furious.  He opens his eyes and scrabbles for his helmet, intent on finding a grip.   
  
“Simpleton,” Vegeta spits disdainfully, assuming Goku means to remove his helmet for air and completely content to watch him do so.   Goku can’t actually expand his lungs anymore, so in a panic he catches the rim and pulls, throwing his head as far as he can get it. He hopes it’s enough, and that the angry red welts have at least shown up enough that Vegeta can see under his chin to the wound that bars him from speaking.  Vegeta freezes, staring he assumes. Goku feels sweat from his hairline cut a cold line under his clammy jaw Dizzy and tired and in pain he swallows and struggles a bit longer for air, throat bobbing painfully on nothing while Vegeta decides  
  
Something.  
  
The void gets darker behind Goku’s eyes while he battles his day’s second bout of oxygen deprivation.  
  
Vegeta isn’t touching him anymore.  Goku releases his helm and searches laboriously for where Vegeta floats, fists tightly balled at his side and head at a tense angle.  Goku can’t tell up from down, and his ki won’t reach for the ship they left behind. It’s all too dark and spinning to fast. He’s gonna die.   
  
Well if that’s how it turns out, he would at least have liked to tell Vegeta he has no reason to go to Earth.   
  
Goku leans back, looking out at the incredible vastness of space and the unfamiliar dust of an unfamiliar galaxy spreading around him into infinity.  He feels something pulling his arm. It must be Vegeta, Goku reaches clumsily for him and thinks back to when Karin opened his memories.  
  
He gets close to mingle his ki to Vegeta’s, laying bare a single thought.   
  
_Earth no longer grants wishes._ _  
_ _  
_ The black gives way for true nothingness.  
  


* * *

Goku wakes up.  And not somewhere strange, with clouds for a landscape and lovely pagodas as he imagined heaven might look, but in a medbay, on a heated examination bench.  His skin rises with goosebumps, damp, but he’s covered in a warm towel. He brings up his arms and rubs at his sore eyes.  
  
“You’re awake,” Someone with a scratchy voice he hasn’t heard before says.  Goku stretches satisfyingly, but finds with some confusion that it hurts.  
  
“G’mornin’,” he croaks without a thought and relaxes.  He nearly falls asleep again, but something cold slaps onto his cheek.   
  
“I know you want to sleep but it won’t be long.  Get dressed. I’m calling Vegeta here.” Oh, right.  Vegeta, that whole thing.  
  
Goku freezes.   
  
_I told him the dragon balls’re gone!_ _  
__  
_ Goku tries to sit up and his ribs sting, prompting him to grab them - wrapped. “Ow tsstststs,” he hisses.  
  
That person who was talking scoots away.  Goku looks at them properly.  
  
A handsome greying woman with a proud profile and deep set eyes leans back into a low chair, crosses her legs and taps away at the pad she planted on his face.  Goku looks down to his feet and finds generic smallclothes and a dark thermal jumpsuit. He yawns and tries to stand, but his ankle protests when he plants his foot on the ground.  He decides to dress himself lying down.  
  
The woman speaks again.  “We haven’t properly met, but I’m Basil.  I work as a control op and medic. You’re still injured because Vegeta wanted to speak as soon as you could talk and he has no respect for my job.  That’s why you’re so tired.” She doesn’t look away from her reading material.  
  
“I’m Son Goku,” he says and smiles at her briefly before diving back into his battle with the pants.  _No wonder Bardock gave me a skirt._  
  
“That’s not on your file,” she says, more interested than contrary.  
  
“Idunno what ya’ve got but I hear my old man messed with stuff.”  The pants are finally on. Goku thanks his stars the material is stretchy enough for him to fit his bulky chest and shoulders while he tries to feed his arms through the short sleeves.  He runs out of breath quickly. He has the blasted thing on though, and he finds with some relief that it is suitably loose and comfortable once he has it on. They often look quite tight on the other Saiyans.  
  
“Is it true that you were born with a power level of 2?”  
  
Goku pulls on long socks that remind him of Chichi and Tenshinhan, then he processes her question.  “Dunno.” He’d be more forthright if talking didn’t hurt so bad, he thinks. She seems to get that and lays off.   
  
Or maybe right now he just doesn’t feel like talking.   
  
He leaves the boots offered to him off and leans back on his palms, dangling his injured leg and folding the other foot up over his inner thigh.  Basil side-eyes him.  
  
“Lay down. Sit still.” Goku blinks but does so without protest.  Basil hops to her feet and rummages through some shelving for a couple pillows and some covers.  Goku finds himself once more in the somewhat uncomfortable position of being fussed over, and cooperates with a furrowed brow when she lifts his legs by his calves to slide the padding underneath.   
  
“What’s it for?” he asks, a bit blunt but he doesn’t quite have syllables to spare.   
  
“You have leg injuries and you were deprived of oxygen.  This will ameliorate swelling until we can put you back in a healing tank and keep your blood in your upper body therefore your head.  You already have brain damage, wouldn’t want to make it any worse, _Vegeta…_ ” She mutters the last bit to herself and Goku finally sees the prickly Saiyan underneath the stately demeanor.  He smiles his response but it wears off, dull mood and exhaustion distracting him.  
  
“Thank you…” he says sleepily.  He gets the cold pad to the face again.  
  
“Don’t sleep.” He chuckles, but it’s half-hearted.  
  
The door to the medbay slides open, Vegeta and Chicor step through.   
  
“Don’t touch the lights,” Basil growls.  Chicor raises his hands placatingly but his exaggerated expression patronizes her, and she curls her lip at his attitude.   
  
Goku cuts in the moment he and Vegeta make eye contact.  “Coward!” It’s gravelly and quiet but you could hear a feather drop the next moment.  Basil smooths down the wrinkles sitting made in her pants and gathers herself.  
  
“Call me when you’re done here or leave when I come back.  You have ten minutes until I do.” She walks out without another word.   


“Shit.  You’re really a piece of work,” Chicor crosses his arms.  Vegeta walks over to the examination table.  
  
“We’re not going to be able to force anything out of him,” Vegeta says solemnly.  Chicor scratches his head, upset then walks forward as well, but he doesn’t step very close.  
  
“Idunno, some pain might work,” he mutters.  
  
“I’m going to be direct, Kakarot, because you clearly function with all the subtlety of a brick.  Why were you on the station with Garang?” Goku drops his guard, happy Vegeta isn’t asking him about the dragon balls.  
  
“I wanted to find him and tell him about uh - ” Goku glances at Chicor, and coughs briefly, face twisting in the throes of obsolescence.  
  
“Chicor.  I’m Chicor,” said Saiyan growls.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Vegeta glares between both of them.  “Why?”  
  
Goku’s frown hikes up on his lower lip and he swallows heavily.  “He attacked me outta nowhere. I thought someone came to visit then he trashed my room and pinned me dow-” Goku clenches his teeth and swallows and Vegeta turns his head, considering.   
  
He’s aware of all this.  Chicor told him as much and it doesn’t exactly take a logical leap to wonder why a cooped up and cornered Saiyan would run off.  That’s just it, though. Vegeta can’t wrap his mind around this guy.  
  
By all accounts, he could not have been strong enough to escape in the first place.  Chicor may not hold a candle to say, Shalla, but he isn’t one of the only exclusive fighters on board for no reason.  For not a single minute in his presence did Vegeta consider Goku to carry the bearing of a Saiyan, and yet his actions, his stubbornness, his edge in battle that felled an enemy that should not be his match - if Raditz’s report is to be trusted - and his grit, not giving an inch to Vegeta even under threat of death.  For all he knew Vegeta meant to take his life out there. He’d sooner give his life then leave it defenceless and that -  
  
That’s Saiyan - or how a Saiyan should be about their home planet.  But it’s fucking _wrong._ _  
_ _  
_ That loyalty, that determination, that grit; it’s all wasted on a weak braindead lowlife and the shitty planet he happened to land on.  Now here he is, sowing discord and rebuffing Vegeta at every turn as though he considers Him, the Prince, a joke. Well Vegeta has the final word on what is and is not strength, is Saiyan, and he’s not fucking laughing.  
  
Goku was right that they needed to hold their ground and fight, but he will regret insulting Vegeta to do so.  When Vegeta’s through with him, he’ll be on his knees worshipping the very ground beneath his feet and he will offer Vegeta his secrets with all that loyalty and that stalwart spirit and Vegeta, will take it, and then with the utmost satisfaction -  
  
_Leave him in the dust._    
  
There is not a thing he cannot have if he sets his eyes on it, and right now, his prize is lying horizontal in front of him.   
  
“So talking is still beyond you?  Want to try getting in my head again?”  Vegeta goads icily. Goku turns onto his side to shift the pressure on his aching ribs, then sits up and lifts a hand to rest on Vegeta’s head.  He nearly lets him in his shock that someone would dare to touch him, but smacks his hand away when his brain catches up with the motion. “Don’t fucking touch me.”  
  
“But you said… I’m not a hermit, I dunthink I can do it without touchin’ you.” Goku replies wearily.  Vegeta narrows his eyes at him.  
  
“I was being sarcastic, you cretin.”  Vegeta’s words take on a nasty edge that further sours Goku’s mood.  He doesn’t want to argue, doesn’t want to respond to give Vegeta _another_ way to insult him, so he turns his head and frowns at the wall.  Vegeta glares at him, peeved that this third-class would dare to ignore him but the turn of his head emphasizes the ring of bruising around his neck and Vegeta himself looks away, uncomfortable.  Chicor whistles, then leans in to get a better look. Goku rears back from the intrusion on his space, then Chicor snags his bicep to keep him from getting too far away.  
  
“Wow, might want to keep that covered up or even less people will like ya.”  
  
“Huh?” Goku responds, and Vegeta rolls his eyes.  Chicor lets go on his own without a fuss though, but Goku looks deeply unsettled.   
  
“You should know, I think you’re fucking weird and I can’t stand the sight of you - but I owe you.  Unless this guy orders it,” Chicor gestures to Vegeta, who practices the face he’ll make when he personally witnesses someone sprout a second head, and continues, “I’ll protect you until that debt is paid in full.”  Chicor finishes with his hands on his hips and a satisfied smile. Goku balks at him.  
  
“Uh, no thanks.” Chicor chokes.  “What’d I do?”  
  
“Y-you… Garang… nevermind,” Chicor fumbles.  The corner of Vegeta’s mouth edges up in a smile and he lifts one brow at him, somewhere in the realm of a smile but still firmly a smirk.  In Chicor’s embarrassment he just looks like a shark in the water.  
  
The mention of Garang, however, brings another interesting morsel to the surface; Goku’s face falls into a careful, entirely uncharacteristic facsimile of neutrality.  Vegeta wonders at what clearly edges on the tip of his tongue.  
  
“Saiyans… transform in moonlight,”  Goku states. A fact.  
  
Chicor sniffs. “No shit.”  
  
Goku doesn’t react, and for a moment looks beyond Vegeta, then back at him.  “Garang was still himself, though.” Vegeta’s brow furrows, and he realizes Goku never had the opportunity to learn the finer points of transformation.   
  
“Garang is a storied elite with a long bloodline of power - it would be strange if he couldn’t maintain his mind,” Vegeta says, humoring Goku for whatever else this might reveal.   
  
“Oh.  Is it hard to control?” Vegeta cocks his head, but Chicor laughs.  
  
“It’s not something you could hope to achieve.  Only elites with the talent can undergo training to control Oozaru,” he brags.   
  
Goku blinks at him, eyes dark and disarmingly wide. “And you guys can?”  
  
“Naturally.” Vegeta replies, tone flat and clipped with suspicion.   
  
“How d’ya know that you’ve got what it takes?” Goku asks, and Chicor snorts derisively.   
  
“Don’t know why it matters, seeing as you don’t have a tail to transform with anymore.”  He chuckles and elbows Vegeta for feedback but the smaller Saiyan remains pensive.  
  
“Generally a Saiyan that can remember his transformation afterward can learn to wield it.  There isn’t any reliable reporting that conflicts with that requirement,” He’s close to whatever eats Goku, he can feel it.   
  
But that answer doesn’t affect the Earth-Saiyan as intended.  He smiles at them, at Vegeta, _sweetly_ for the first time, but his eyes are completely shuttered.   
  
“Okay.”   
  
Vegeta blinks at him as he looks between the two expectantly, politely urging them to speak up or conclude their business.  Or perhaps it’s pushy; the frog in his throat has been croaking deeper so it could just be the strain on his voice. Then something visibly occurs to him.   
  
“‘Geeta-”  He swallows and clears his throat for the uncooperative syllables. “That thing you did before, I want you to do it again.”  
  
Chicor audibly gasps and Vegeta curses Goku for being not only unsubtle, but completely fucking tonedeaf.  “Clarify or I’ll punch you in the throat.”  
  
Goku raises his palms in a mild panic, unsure of what exactly set him off.  “Look, I know it’s weird, but I think I need to do it.”  
  
“What thing. Whatdyoudo?” Chicor asks.  
  
Vegeta’s blood pressure rises so fast he worries something will hemorrhage. “I don’t know what the _fuck_ you’re talking about.” Goku furrows his brow and raises his knees just to have something solid between them, looking Vegeta up and down as though he isn’t the one making fucking awful implications.   
  
“That thing - idunno how to describe it-” He coughs and Vegeta doesn’t even pity him.  “That really weird feeling thing-” Chicor guffaws and Goku ignores him, “where you put your hand on my neck.”  
  
Vegeta’s teeth crack from unclenching his jaw, then he looks away, mouth lax from disbelief.  Chicor loses some of his spirit - it’s what he fucking deserves.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Goku looks between the both of them, despondent and confused. “What, what?”  
  
“Why would you want to do that?” Vegeta asks, relieved now that he’s pulled his head out of that particular gutter, but still - generally - quite confused.   
  
“Felt kinda like gettin’ grabbed when I had a tail, so I thought I could train it,” Goku says, serious and still a bit mortified by the, from his perspective, completely unsolicited reactions.  
  
“Wait, but-” Chicor cuts in, “ _why?_ ”  
  
It’s Goku’s turn to rehearse his eyebrow acrobatics. “It’s… a big weakness.”  
  
“Hold on.” Vegeta crosses his arms again. “You trained your tail?”  
  
Goku nods, exhausted, and Chicor looks upon Goku like he’s committing some great tragedy.   
  
“S’it strange to train your weaknesses?” Goku asks.  
  
“No, no.”  Vegeta taps his chest plate. “Only middle and upper-class Saiyans usually brave training their tails.  And hebitating isn’t exactly considered a weakness, so it’s rather unheard of to mitigate.” Goku knits his dark brows together.  
  
“That’s weird.  How’re we supposed to fight if ya just scruff me?”  
  
Chicor raises a flat palm to speak. “No, Kakarot, your reaction was extreme but dominant Saiyans honestly will really dig it.  You haven’t got a tail, so you might as well not lose all your assets.”  
  
Vegeta elbows him in the ribs for a satisfying _‘oof’_ .  “I’ll take you up on that.  Chicor’s an idiot but he’s right that your response was unusual - and frankly, I’m curious about whether you’ll be able to stand up to my prowess.”  He smirks challengingly at Goku, and Goku returns the teeth in spades. Vegeta is much more comfortable with this smile; Kakarot’s spirit dedicated to him and his challenge.  Chicor interrupts the moment however, to be an idiot.  
  
“I want to try-”  
  
“Try harassing my patient and the whole crew gets a round of physicals.”  Basil reappears ominously in the doorway with her hip cocked. The blood drains _worryingly_ quickly from Chicor’s face and before he can dig his grave any deeper, Vegeta has manhandled the much larger Saiyan to the entryway.   
  
“It’s fine we were just leaving.”  Goku doesn’t even see his face again before they disappear into the corridor.  Basil levels her chin at their retreating backs and stomps back into the medbay, where she turns her beady eyed glare on Goku.   
  
“Who said you could sit up?” Goku lays down quickly, instincts stifling his urge to laugh even if it makes his head spin.   
  
She sniffs and begins jabbing buttons on the command terminal of the nearest tank, then grabs a familiar respirator.  “Doesn’t matter anymore. Get up, I’m not wrestling your massive ass into this tank again.”


End file.
